External sound card

[Ricesnaps]

Can anyone recomend an external sound card to use with my laptop?

Would like suggestions in the following price ranges:

>£10
£10 - £50
£50 - 100
£100+

Would also be interested to know the improvement in sound quality given over the headphone socket and any added benefits.

Thanks

[leighinstoke]

I'm using the Soundblaster Live! USB - works perfect in PCDJ giving seperate outputs for each player. Massive improvement compared to the internal soundcard on my Compaq laptop and costs just £40 and I've put mine inside my mixer/cd player case so I just run a cable back to the laptop.

Leigh....

[Danno13]

£10 - 50 - Trust ex5 .. or something like that, £20ish i think. I use one with my laptop as backup and its fine.

£50 - 100 - Maya EX7 if you can find one. the newer ones aren't compatible with certain software from what i hear.

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

The main benefit Rice, is that you have multiple outputs, so that you can assign to different channels on your mixer.

I have a Maya USB soundcard which is similar (but not the same - they don't make mine anymore) to this (http://www.audiotrak.co.uk/music_production/maya44usb/maya44usb.shtml) on one laptop and on my other I have one of these (http://www.djstore.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.pl?affid=froogle&item=echindigodj)

The Maya has more gain, but the Echo sound more refined.


£50 - 100 - Maya EX7 if you can find one. the newer ones aren't compatible with certain software from what i hear.

I have the Maya EX which is similar to the EX7, but with less outputs.

[Thames Valley Discos]

i have the u46dj and gigaporte, sat in a case that never gets used, both sound good though in my shed

[4one4 Sound Solutions]

I have the M-audio Audiophile Firewire external sound card. It was about £129 and i would really recommend it. Has 2 stereo outputs, digital input and output and 1/4" jack monitor for phones which is selectable between A/B. It was built for DJ use and is very high spec. A/D convertors are 24bit/96KHz so they sound really nice. I use traktor 3.0 as the software and an external Kontrol DJ MIDI controller.