New External Sound "Card"

(startx) writes: "Well, it looks like creative has done it again. This time they've created an external sound"card" that connects through usb to your computer or laptop. It's called the Extigy, and looking at the specs, it appears as though it's got every possible audio connector you can possibly think of, along with the standard ir port with remote control. With this, a usb HDD, and a usb cd-rw, it looks like I can have most of my box, outside the box, just for the geek factor :-)" I don't think it's quite as cool-looking as the Stereolink 1200 (which I've never actually heard), but for a few bucks more the Creative crams in a lot of features.

Comments

Notebook sound

[Lewisham]

Good golly. It's a soundcard for a notebook! No more putting up with El Crappo sound chips for me! Yes, I am actually being sincere about this :)

Re:Notebook sound

[J4]

Good, but not golden ear good. Analog tape is about 105 db

I hadda chuckle though, the heading here says "any audio connector you can think of".... No balanced 1/4", no XLR, no bantam jacks, not to mention no external 5 pin DIN for midi. Still, not bad for consumer gear

Does nobody here know anything about this stuff?

[paulbd]

Its quite amazing to read through the high-ranked posts here. Its hard to find any that display more than rudimentary knowledge of computer audio interfaces.

• devices like this have existed for more than 2 years. products from Midiman, SEK'D, Event Systems and other companies offered this kind of configuration for some time. its becoming more common all the time.
• creative's audio products are widely recognized by anyone with any experience as being basically "just good enough" crap. they have terrible noise problems, and often come with basic h/w engineering problems (such as a fixed rate sample clock that forces resampling at any rate other than the chosen one).
• USB for audio is a bunch of crap. It can be made to work, but its being used only because most computers these days come with USB ports, and far fewer come with IEEE1394 ports. It has no redeeming qualities and many drawbacks. There are bandwidth problems, reliability problems, connector stability problems, protocol conformance problems - it goes on and on.
• IEEE1394 ("firewire") is vastly superior, but suffers from a lack of standardization on the transport-level protocol used for audio and MIDI data. There are at least 3 or 4 competing versions of this, with no resolution in sight.
• Several people have pointed out the lack of balanced connectors, as well as the lack of XLR connectors (these two items are strictly orthogonal from one another). Balanced analog I/O is a serious must-have for anything other than the typical low-quality audio stuff 95% of you do with your computers. Of course, that 5% might not be a big enough market to make it worth offering :)

companies like creative are busy trying to make devices that appeal to many consumer's desire for stuff that appears to be "pro" or "semi-pro" gear. creative in particular has failed to make any equipment that even comes close to these descriptions. if audio on your computer matters to you enough that external converters are important, you should not be paying any attention to the extigy, but should instead be paying attention to products from Terratech, Event (even though they refuse to make linux support possible, they are nice devices), Midiman (Delta series) or RME. If you're really serious about audio on your computer, you'd already know that you should be basically buying an audio interface that supports ADAT optical connections and then a totally separate converter box (such as the Tango24 from Frontier Designs, or the ADI series from RME, or if money is tight, perhaps a Fostex unit). this configuration allows you to upgrade your A/D-D/A capabilities and the audio interface independently, which in turn implies the potential for improved channel counts and/or improved converters at a later date. --p