When shopping around for a soundcard keep in mind the kinds of sample players you may wish to use. Some call for specific drivers such as GigaStudio's GSIF drivers. You will beable to accommodate most samplers with WDM and ASIO drivers. Don't use MME - high latency. I understand that Echo makes a good external soundcard for laptops.

The Echo Audio card is the Indigo IO model and it is a pcmcia cardbus card with stereo in/out (on 1/8 inch mini plugs) + volume control and will go up to 24/96. Costs about $180 USD from most online retailers + shipping.

I got one from Music 123 several weeks ago but it self destructed on power up and while I was waiting for the no hassle return to get back to them I changed my mind and ordered a TASCAM US-122 instead because for about $12 USD more than I had in the Indigo IO I felt I could get a LOT more functionality with the US-122. So far it has worked out well and, since my personal weapon of choice in the softsyth wars is GigaStudio, I think I did the right thing. I'm having both success and fun with GigaStudio 24, which came free with the US-122 (ie, since I'm having success I'm also having fun, LOL).

A friend of mine who has GigaStudio 160 came over and to the best of our ability to find out it seems that the only difference between the two is that Giga 24 1)only has 24 note polyphony (instead of 160), 2) it only has one port so it only has 16 midi tracks/channels, and 3) it doesn't have the 4 effects plugins that come with Giga 160. Other than those things, it seems to have all the other tools and capabilities, so for a FREE EXTRA with the sound card, it's pretty good, but it's obviously designed to get you to upgrade; meanwhile, I can find out what I think of GigaStudio and whether or not I want to get one of the new GigaStudio 3 versions.

Tom



------------------
Bigger is not always better

Rikki,
You mentioned that you found a piano soundfont that was very good. Could you elaporate? Is it as good as your Yamaha CVP? How would you rate it? Where did you find it?
Starkeeper

Hi Terry,
my settings are as follows
Audio Device : Sigma Tel Audio ( that's my brand soundcard)
Buffer Size 64
KS Buffers 2
The only item I have ticked is " force 16 bit samples ( buggy wdm driver work around.
Input & output delay is automatically set at 10.
Works on mine even if it might not be the optimum setting.

Best wishes
Rikki
[QUOTE]Originally posted by TERRYC:
[B]Rikki thanks for the info.

Thanks Oleg,
I may give it another go, though i recently found some 2 to 3 octave controller type keyboards that are also soundcards. One of those might suit me better as far as portability goes. Not so much for realtime arranger playing ( bit small haa haa) but they could be used for recording melodies or step recording etc when I'm out and about.

best wishes
Rikki
[QUOTE]Originally posted by oleg7:
[B]Rikki, M-Audio soundcards usually have good drivers.

Hi Starkeeper,
I think these are all freebies,
but I do remember having to donate $5 for one of the ones I've downloaded, can't remember which.

For playing solo piano midifiles, they sound great, for realtime playing I still prefer my clp170.

http://www.hum.aau.dk/~bovbjerg/piano4.html http://www.gsonic.com/maestro/ http://www.soundcreationsinc.com/splendid/index.html

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Starkeeper:
[B]Rikki,
You mentioned that you found a piano soundfont that was very good.

Rikki, a buffer size of 64 seems very low, i.e., very low latency. A latency of 441 or 10ms or less is usually good enough. The lower the latency is the better will be the live playing experience. So at 64 you are doing very well indeed as long as you don't end up with crackles & pops.

Hi Frank,
well that sounds promising. I'm not getting crackles & pops.
Just out of interest, the fact that I can set it to such a low latency and not get crackles & pops, could that be due to the speed of the laptop's processor ( 3.06), or the amount of memory (500mb) or
the type of internal soundcard ( sigma tel) & the asio driver(asio4all),
or just sheer good fortune that I ended up with a combination that works.

All I basically remember you telling me ( or at least it came across as) was to get as much memory & as fast a processor as my budget would allow.

best wishes
Rikki





[This message has been edited by rikkisbears (edited 08-25-2004).]

Rikki, the ability to achieve low latency has mostly to do with the quality of your soundcard and the associated drivers. The processor would play only a minor role. The processor, memory and hard drives become very important in terms of latency once you start using very large samples (Bardstown Bosendorfer Piano at 2.5GB) and where such samples are streamed from your hard drive as you play them.

Rikki, with respect to achieving good piano sounds I assume you use a good quality reverb and eqaulizer to optimize your audio equipment. If you are using external reverb and equalizer as effects plug-ins in forte I assume you have turned off the reverb & chorus in LiveSynth Pro to deactivate the soundfont built-in reverb and chorus. These built-in effects are not that good and worse would be you using two reverbs, etc.

If after all this you still can't get a good piano sound then you may have to stay with the one in your clp170 or consider purchasing one in another format and translating it to soundfont. Keep in mind such translations do lose a little in quality and features but they are not bad. I have no doubt that you can find significantly higher quality pianos then you currently have in your clp170. It is just a matter of searching it out and money.


[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 08-26-2004).]

Hi Frank,
thank you. I finding all this information very interesting.

Actually I don't have an external reverb or equalizer. I've just got the audio out of my laptop , plugged into the audio in of the clp. I've gotten used to hearing the sound coming via the piano's speakers.

I have a Harmon Kardon amp and a set of Tannoy speakers which I'll set up again once we move house.

It's not that the soundfont piano's don't sound good,it's probably just that I've gotten used to the clp piano sounds.

best wishes
Rikki
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Frank L. Rosenthal:
[B]Rikki,