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Notebook Audio (PCMCIA) Recommendation

Dec 8, 2004 at 4:58 AM Thread Starter Post #1 of 17
sodaya

sodaya

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Hi. This is yet another advice post. Please note, however, I did go through other similar posts, but I'm still not positive as to what I want. And most importantly, I am a newbie... like I can understand elementary concepts... but if you argue for a product, please tell me why (or else I won't understand your rationale).

I am looking for a PCMCIA card. My primary use will be for listening to music, with some minor video game playing here and there.

I will use:

Grado SR60 headphones
Winamp (decoder = Shibatch mpg123)
standard MP3s

My choices:

1) http://www.echoaudio.com/Products/Ca...goDJ/index.php
2) http://creative.com/products/product...&product=10769
3) http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=...9f07cb11070055


The thing I like about the Creative card is it has EAX® ADVANCED HD, EAX® 4.0 ADVANCED HD, Dolby® Digital EX and DTS-ES. (if you don't know, EAX is awesome for video games... it's definitely something you have to experience. Basically, it's amazing positional audio... like you know exactly where something is, just by the sound)

However, I think (?) the Echo DJ has an amp, which is awesome for my headphones. And, I guess the Echo is easiest for connecting to my stereo (through the AUX connection) ??

I know next to nothing about the m-audio, I just found it posted.

I live in Edmonton, so the Echo is very easy for me to get. The other two, I have to order online.
 
Dec 8, 2004 at 5:03 AM Post #2 of 17
I have not heard the creative card and I am unsure what yuo would do with all the acronyms it supports.

Between the Transit and the Echo I can recommend the Echo for portability and good sound out of the box.

I understand you can modify the Transit to better performance but I have not personally experienced these benefits.

Cheers

Thomas
 
Dec 8, 2004 at 9:06 AM Post #4 of 17
I wholeheartedly recommend the Echo Indigo for 2 channel music. If you'll be watching more movies and gaming than listening to music, the Audigy would be an alternative. There are several USB solutions that are well represented at Head-Fi as well.
 
Dec 8, 2004 at 3:28 PM Post #5 of 17
well that's the thing... I will be listening to more music than movies/games

what about connecting to my stereo and the amp for my headphones? The Echo is better, isn't it?
 
Dec 8, 2004 at 8:35 PM Post #6 of 17
You should be able to mate it with your stereo with little effort. Connecting to a headphone amp will require some level tweaking to find the sweet spot. I've used mine with a Corda Prehead amp on several occasions and had no problem using my Beyers, but the sensitivity of the Grados required me to turn down the output on the Indigo so much so, that I actually prefer using them without an amp at all.
 
Dec 9, 2004 at 7:32 AM Post #8 of 17
Ahhh, okies....yea, the internal amp is powerful enough to drive any moderately sensative headphones and I think it's transparent enough to mate with a line-in on your stereo and still sound great.

I have a pair of Beyerdynamic DT531s that need some help with the Indigo output so I mate it with my Prehead and it sounds peachy with plenty of room to spare. My Grado SR225s on the other hand are very easy to drive with the Indigo and sound wonderful. For whatever reason the Indigo/Grado is a synergistic combination that keeps me coming back to my CD collection. IMHO, it easily rivals the DT531/Prehead combo.

This is a personal testimonial for the sound quality of equipment that I've lived with for a few months now and I can't and won't speculate on equipment I've never heard or your personal taste. I'd love to be able to afford to experiement with higher priced gear at will, but in light of that, the price of the Indigo is justified as a viable and well established alternative to onboard laptop sound. If I had to make a bet, I'd say you'll like it very much without any trepidation.

Is there another PCMCIA alternative that's better for the same price? I honestly wouldn't know, but I've been more than satisfied enough with the Indigo than to care about looking elsewhere.

If you do make the jump, then please do me the favor of listing your impressions here. Another opinion would be most welcome.
 
Dec 9, 2004 at 10:48 AM Post #9 of 17
does it have to be pcmcia? if your choices are not so limited, maybe could try optoplay 2.0 - the card seems to have a pretty good rep for what it costs. actually i am prolly gonna get one soon... i will try to report back on how it sounds.
 
Dec 11, 2004 at 11:08 AM Post #12 of 17
I have the Indigo and am extremely happy with it. But when powering some more demanding headphones (in my example Sennheiser HD 590 in comparison to the MX 500 I use most of the time with my notebook) the card gets really really hot! I can actually feel it through the notebooks keyboard. Therefore the notebooks battery drains quite a bit faster, so this might be a problem for mobile usage.

However, I use my notebook without the battery most of the time, so this is no problem. The heat buildup has never lead to any problems either (only on really hot summer days it was a bit uncomfortable). As I said, the sound quality of the Indigo is really excellent, and it drives the HD 590 much better than my stereo.
 
Dec 11, 2004 at 12:01 PM Post #13 of 17
Breadnbutter, you've touched on the only issue I have with the Echo Indigo. It can't drive all the headphones I throw at it, namely the less sensitive ones. The Sennheiser HD590s are a perfect example.

I'm sure you found that you need to turn the volumn knob almost all the way to maximum to get a decent listening level out of the HD590s. At or near maximum volumn causes the amp to heat up. To the Indigo's credit, it can operate for hours at this setting and the fidelity will remain relatively untouched by design.

Your best bet would eventually be the use of a decent portable headphone amplifier if the heat becomes a major concern or you simply want to give the headphones more juice to play with. For this very reason, I strictly use my Grados with the Indigo.
 
Dec 11, 2004 at 2:03 PM Post #14 of 17
I had no problem with the listening level and the HD590's. Given that the Software settings were at maximum level, the Headphones could be driven to levels to high to listen to (well, for me). I heard that it can be even used with the HD600's, even though this is probably not recomandable.

Since I don't have a decent headphone setup (yet! waiting for christmas and my HD650's + Corda HA 2 to arrive
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) I can't really say how much the sound quality is degraded when driving HD590's. At least to me it sounded O.K. .

Most of the time I use it with MX500's anyway (in the office), so for me there is no problem anyway. With the MX500's I have to adjust the volume level in winamp to 3% or so, to have the volume knob in the good range. The heatup is very small in that case, so the HD590's really seem to put some stress on the Indigo.
 
Dec 11, 2004 at 6:27 PM Post #15 of 17
do you really need the EAX and all those fancy features provided by the creative? EAX doesn't make a huge dif for me when playing games like warcraft 3.. i think it makes a larger impact if you play Doom 3, Half-Life 2 and the likes..and unless your laptop packs a huge punch (think Dell Inspiron 9100) you won't be playing those games anyway.
 
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