Laptop Setup

A Forum for topics relating to the soundcard/ audio converter that is used with MsPinky
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lully9
Posts:1
Joined:Wed Jan 04, 2006 11:17 pm
Laptop Setup

Post by lully9 » Wed Jan 04, 2006 11:34 pm

I have a HP ZT3000 [centrino 1.7] nice laptop



it has a piece of crap sound card in it, Sound Max something

(has one out put one input)

and i just bought a external usb sound blaster sound card

(witch has a output and a input)



I've heard that its possible just just run your tables thru your computer just useing the soundcards,then back out to your mixer..

like this setup

http://www.virtualdj.com/products/timecode/



im confused as to why this wouldnt work with mspinky :idea:
dlpinkstah
Site Admin
Posts:1093
Joined:Mon Jun 07, 2004 9:17 pm

Ms Pinky can function with cheap sound cards

Post by dlpinkstah » Fri Jan 06, 2006 5:23 am

The Ms Pinky control signal does not require a very high-fidelity audio converter in order to function properly. The only requirement is for approximately 48 dB of signal-to-noise ratio, and a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz. Even an inexpensive soundcard can meet this requirement. What is required is decent stereo left-to-right signal separation, and freedom from any gross distortions such as caused by signal clipping or a very dirty or broken needle, or some other massive signal problem.



There are some very inexpensive soundcard combinations which I've tried. Ms Pinky works fine with many of them. Perhaps the cheapest soundcard combination that I've used successfully with Ms Pinky is an aggregate audio device which I created (under OSX Tiger) using the built-in audio of my PowerBook coupled together with the Griffin iMic (which costs about $40.00 USD). It works surprisingly well! Latency is nice and low, and the sound quality produced by the iMic is not bad really.



I have not tried "ASIO4ALL" on WinXP but I intend to check it out.



So I would say-- yes! Go for it. Try it out with any cheapo soundcard you can find. Some will probably work great, other won't, just depending on how gross the distortions they introduce are.



The main concern I have with very cheap audio hardware is that the latency is usually very high, not to mention the bad sound quality.
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