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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.
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 :)
I've been looking for something like this for a while. Not to get my connectors externally, that's not an issue (I can get any extensions I like). To me, the key issue here is that the sound-generating circuits get out of the RF-wise nightmarish environment inside a computer case. There's so much induction going on you simply don't want to generate sound there.
So this is definitely something for my next desktop.
2) Where's the FUFMe port!
3) D00d! With all these different ports, there's just GOTTA be a way to rip those copy-protected CDs!
woof.
Karma cap: te only way to go is down. Otherwise there's no point in writing another Score:5 post!
Instead of taking up a drive bay for the Live! Drive and conecting it via an IDE cable to the Soundblaster in your PCI slot which in turn hooks into your digital decoder for Dolby digital.. plus 3 separate device drivers for each one and separate software apps to drive em and and and...
Now you've got one USB device that is more portable, cheaper and easier to fabricate/package/sell than the 3 individual items, and as an added bonus gets them into the laptop market outside of their existing OEM soundchip customers.
If that's not the definition of a damned smart convergence device I need to smoke better quality crack.
Do not taunt Happy-Fun Ball
1. Start with 4 balanced inputs, each one with its own super-shielded A/D converter. (Possibly increase to 24 inputs for studio models.)
2. Instead of having an analog mixer, write all four of the streams from the four inputs to the hard drive at 16bit/44kbps ("CD quality"). All the mixing can then be done digitally, after the recording session is done. This is what musicians are used to from the bad old analog days when we all had a 4- or 8-track in our garage: we jam first, and then take our time mixing the multiple tracks down to 2, applying whatever effects necessary to get it to sound right.
Current amateur gear for the computer (like this box) requires you to record two tracks (L/R) at a time, and most bands don't work that way. This either forces you to mix the whole band as you record, but then you can't turn up the drums or equalize the bass after the recording is done, because they're all mashed together. If you want that sort of control, you have to record the drums alone (playing to a metronome), then the bass, then one guitar, etc. This process really kills the joy of home recording, and it kills any band chemistry that would come through if you played "live."
The obvious solution is to allow the simultaneous writing of more than two tracks to the hard drive. That way, you can play live but also adjust the individual instruments in the mixdown.
I'm sure tools like this exist, but they're made for studios or pros. But, there is no reason why the thing I describe would have to be expensive. Really, it shouldn't be more expensive than this external Sound Blaster, because the base model doesn't need all the fancy in/out MIDI and optical stuff. I know I would pay about $250 for the contraption, and I'm poor. If I can afford it, many people can. There is no way it would cost that much to make.
The only question is how many tracks USB can carry before it's saturated. Since it appears it can carry two at 24bit/96kbps, it should carry at least four at 16bit/44kbps. That would be enough for me. It may well be that any more than this would require SCSI or Firewire. Maybe also RAID. Fine. None of these things are out of the reach of almost-ordinary joes anymore.
Now if I could get my basement tuned to give good sound and rent some pro microphones (and maybe a mixer), I'd have a home studio as good as any other.
- 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