Thinkpads Forum

Did anyone use it for music recording? How does the IEEE 1394 work? How good is the sound card?

I use a W510 with FL Studio and an Echo AudioFire 2.
The built in firewire does not work at all with my AudioFire, and I have no reason to believe it's different with the W520.
I got a Texas Instruments XIO2200 based expresscard and it works without a hitch.
The build in soundcard is utter crap.

Great to hear that it's at least 'usable' for recording! I looked around and W5XX seems like one of the good options for Windows. What other gears do you have?

BTW, are you talking about this? http://www.ioi.com.tw/products/proddeta ... ostID=2001
How did you use this desktop card with your W510?

I use FL Studio and various plugins and only need a single good output, I don't record my self, it's all electronic, but the hardware is the same.
I use a SIIG expresscard for laptops, here is a link: http://www.siig.com/it-products/firewir ... scard.html
Other then that I have the Echo AudioFire2, used as a transport that feeds my Atoll DAC 100 and a Aragon 18k preamp that drives my AKG K240DF headphones.

Thanks! Do you guys know about any good DAW w/ USB interface? Also can the existing 1394a port be used with the AudioFire2? Since the 4pin for the firewire is used for data and rest 2 for power. So theoretically it should be possible.

I simply trying to avoid 'one more device' to carry around.

USB 2.0 is half-duplex, Firewire is full-duplex, so firewire audio devices work more efficiently then USB.
USB 3.0 is full-duplex, but no audio devices has been made for USB 3.0 yet.
It is possible to use a USB interface, but it will put greater load on the CPU then one using firewire.
As I said, the W510's firewire port doesn't work at all with my Audiofire, I get a few secs of noisy playback at best when using that port.
The onboard firewire port on W510 and 520 is a 4-pin port and is not powered, there are only a few laptops around with 6-pin firewire interfaces.
You'll get much better sound of the the Audiofire when using an external power supply, since the power that comes from a computer is dirty and there is not much of it, the same is true for USB audio devices.

Adda wrote:The build in soundcard is utter crap.

That's because the soundcards on computers are meant for listening to MP3s, not for pro audio.

Anyone tried this? http://tascam.com/product/us-800/specifications/

@thePCxp Thinkpad Wxxx series are meant as workstations. Why would I expect a cheap audio card from a workstation class device?

Adda wrote:As I said, the W510's firewire port doesn't work at all with my Audiofire, I get a few secs of noisy playback at best when using that port.

I am having the exact same problem with my new w530
I was rather surprised by this as it worked just fine on my T61..

I have ordered an express card FW interface, but while I am waiting for that to arrive, I was wondering if there are any workarounds to getting the built in FW to work with an echo audiofire?

eyeland wrote: I am having the exact same problem with my new w530
I was rather surprised by this as it worked just fine on my T61..

I have ordered an express card FW interface, but while I am waiting for that to arrive, I was wondering if there are any workarounds to getting the built in FW to work with an echo audiofire?

I haven't even been able to improve the situation even a little bit with the built in firewire.
Loading the Legacy firewire driver (only valid for Win7) didn't do anything at all, it does improve performance quite a bit when using my TI expresscard though.