Thinkpads Forum

I use the T61 for editing and mastering audio I've recorded (using other recording gear) for video and CDs, usually in 24-bit 48kHz. Will I get better playback audio quality if I upgrade to an Audigy 2 ZS PC card soundcard?

I realize that the different soundcard won't affect the quality of the captured and edited audio itself -- my question is whether I will get noticeably better quality playback so I can hear the detail in the audio better when I'm mastering.

Thanks

I had an Audigy 2 ZS before, not on my ThinkPad but on an older Dell. It was ok -- not great, but not terrible either. The main benefits of the Creative line of cards in my mind are multi-channel outputs and support for gaming protocols like EAX, etc.

I don't personally have experience with any of these, but check out the Echo Indigo line. They have generally positive feedback from the pro-audio community from the little info I've gleamed on the web. Just one note: last time I checked these out there was a bug where if you ejected the card when the machine was on it caused some crashes and buggy behavior. Maybe they've fixed this already since this was a year back.

Everyone seems to report very clear and accurate sound reproduction from those cards. Just a little pricey.

Not sure if its bad enough to limit audio bandwidth but there have been several posts about the PCMCIA slot implementation on the T61 (very slow). Do a search and see if it will nix your plan.

Audigy on pcmcia/expresscard doesn't have DSP processor for sound (or something like that) so your internal CPU will be used. (based on requirements of creative's card and google, if i'm wrong please correct it)

Also sound quality isn't that good. There are plenty sound cards with USB 2.0 that can produce much better sound. I'm thinking about that myself.

The one from hart22 looks pretty good

Nolonemo wrote:I use the T61 for editing and mastering audio I've recorded (using other recording gear) for video and CDs, usually in 24-bit 48kHz. Will I get better playback audio quality if I upgrade to an Audigy 2 ZS PC card soundcard?

I realize that the different soundcard won't affect the quality of the captured and edited audio itself

Why not simplify matters by using a professional audio card for the recording?

A diversion here for those of you not familiar with professional audio gear - if Nolonemo was using a laptop audio card for recording, rather than stand-alone equipment, then a different card could indeed affect the quality of the audio - that is largely dependant upon the A/D converter used and the firmware. You will get better quality audio from a professional audio card. Audigy cards are generally consumer grade, although some may be semi-pro. Note that any company can call a product "pro," but that does not make it professional grade.

A professional sound card can be easily distinguished by the audio I/O connections. A pro card uses XLR connectors for both analog and digital. Analog is balanced at 0 to +10 dBu and generally adjustable, with input impedance > 10k ohms and output impedance > 100 ohms. Digital is AES/EBU.

Internally a pro audio card generally has its own DSP, does DMA access for file I/O, and has onboard compression/decompression for formats such as MP3. Because the interface (whether PCMCIA or USB) is used almost exclusively for file I/O the bandwidth of that interface is far less critical than it may be with a consumer or semi-pro card where the CPU is doing most of the heavy lifting.

PCMCIA pro audio cards start at a list price of about $500.00.

To return to Nolonemo's question, if your concern is the quality of your audio monitoring when editing, then it may make a difference. For field wotk I use a semi-pro (pro inputs, IHF outputs) TASCAM USB interface with its own headphone interface. which lets me monitor audio during recording and playback, and can easily drive high or low impedance cans.

Thanks Dale, because of venue constraints, it's not practical to record on a laptop. (Sometimes I will have access to audio recorded by the venue's sound engineer, and in that case I use that - the audio is usually synced to video of the performances.) I record on a Sony PCM-D50, which has pretty good sound quality as sub-$1000 portable devices go.