R60 - Advanced dock for audio

[rdkng07]

Hi all,

I’m looking for a solution for backups and good audio for my R60. I thought an advanced dock would be the solution. I could run a second hard drive in the ultra bay for backups, and run the audio through the dock as well. But after research here on the forum and elsewhere, I can’t find a solid answer on the audio side. It seems everyone is using the PCIx1 slot for video cards, not audio. Will it support audio? I also thought of running an Echo Indigo card from the dock, but now I find out there is no PCMCIA or Express card slots. Has anyone found a good solution for using computer speakers (Pro Media 2.1) without the R60 (or T60) card slots? I would like to keep the whole mess (audio and backups) connected to the dock, and a USB card seems the only answer. I would prefer something more intergraded than USB, and I don’t think I can use the S/PDIF connection with the 2.1s without a stereo receiver or something.

Thanks much,
Rodger

[truk]

I'm a bit tired, so forgive me if I didn't entirely understand your post. The advanced dock has an audio pass through for basic 2.0 audio. The PCI-E (I believe that is the interface on the advanced dock, the dock II for the T20-30 era computers has the PCI slot) slot should support a higher quality sound card just fine, as long as you get one that fits in the slot and has drivers.

[rdkng07]

Truk, you understood correctly. I think that is the option I will look into, thank you for the reply.

Rodger

[tommy d]

Check into a firewire card, that will give you better audio than even the PCIe card. I just posted on this topic here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... highlight=

My 1st post is speakers and my second is sound cards.

Good Luck!

[truk]

Check into a firewire card, that will give you better audio than even the PCIe card. I just posted on this topic here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... highlight=

My 1st post is speakers and my second is sound cards.

Good Luck!

I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I don't want to have people too mixed up. The firewire card is most likely not going to be as good as a high quality internal sound card, but will most likely cost less. A good sound card can be expensive to get true 7.1 type audio. Most of the firewire cards use "virtual" 4.0-7.1, which is not as good of quality. He was also looking to avoid USB (which is very similar physically to firewire) or PCMCIA, so if he had no ports in his dock, he would need a firewire card anyway. To your defense, I have a USB true 5.1 sound card here, which I love, that I paid only $30 for. It's just not a solution to his problem.

[tommy d]

With all due respect, I completely disagree with you about PCI audio vs. 1394. I have a home studio and have been on greater than 20 CD's as a hired musician and never in my life have I been in a professional studio that didn't use 1394 (or proprpietary analog: MOTU and DigiDesign) audio because it is simply cleaner and higher quality. Sound Blaster is really rather low quality stuff and 7.1 is supremely overated except for gaming and DVD. When was the last time you bought a CD mixed for 7.1?

USB can be quite CPU intensive whereas 1394 is not. On the whole PCI audio is user grade equipment and 1394 is pro. Go to musiciansfriend and look at the interfaces and you will see that only noobs use pci.