Re: Low Lantecy Soundcard for Laptop Gig

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On 29 jul 2007, at 22.51, Krispen Hartung wrote:

> The only thing  I don't like about the Indigo IO is that its input  
> is only line level.

I too have an old Indigo IO, almost worn out today, the jacks have  
become glitchy... I agree that it's nice and convenient to bring for  
gigs. Never the less I only used it for rehearsing because the output  
sound is not at all as good as I had with my RME Multiface (and now  
with the FireFace400). For electric guitar that doesn't matter IMO  
but when playing flute it really sucks with some fidelity trade-off.

>> So I have shyed away from Macbook with its
>> lack of CardBus support. Firewire just doesn't seem to be built for
>> ultra-low latency performance (that's my opinion).
>
> Really? Is this because of the speed of firewire?

Yes, Kris. PCI and PCMCIA are a little faster than FireWire. Not much  
though.

But you, Mercury, is a keyboard and piano player. Myself I can take  
some latency because the instrument I have played the most is  
electric guitar and then you always have latency depending on the  
distance to your amp and speaker. As long as a delayed signal is not  
merged with a not delayed signal, creating phasing errors, I can  
accept a little latency. And with laptops you don't have a problem at  
concerts with the audience hearing a different latency than you hear.  
That problem is what you get on stage if playing electric guitar at a  
distance from your amp/speaker if the speaker is amplified through a  
PA system by closely positioned microphones. This might also create  
problems for live experienced guitarists when recording in a studio  
with headphones monitoring.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se (Swedish)
www.looproom.com (international)