you can use a PCMCIA->PCI adaptor card to use an Echo Indigo in a desktop now..and notebook tomorrow. i seriously considered firewire, before going with the echo PCI solution again (theres been one in my desktop since i first switched to PC from Mac in 2001). basically the problems with firewire 1) shoddy driver support - Ardour runs on linux, so DigidesignAVID doesnt want their hardware to work on a platform where thered be no incentive to buy ProTools. thus, good luck getting their stuff working. MOTU/DP being a similar case. you could buy something on the freebob 'recommended' list, but youd be seriously limiting your options. 2) only can use the hardware with JACK apps, since freebob isnt ALSa. i guess you could rig up the alsa PCM bridge, but that doesnt always work even with a stable PCI setup 3) most notebooks are 4 pin, this means , you need a power brick in addition to the audio card itself hanging off your notebook. only certain notebooks like the macbook pro have a 6 pin firewire port. compare this with the half-cm slice of space occupied on the outside of your notebook for the Indigo, and no power bricks, no cables, and no external boxes.. 4) speed - PCI is still lower latency since theres less indirection, and lower CPU too. these values both might be fairly trivial, but i can dig up some posts from people more knowledgable than me explaining them.. 5) price. the market has moved towards firewire since it suits the 'plug'n'play' mentality of mac/pc users. so theres pcmcia stuff just sitting on ebay..besides the indigo, theres the vxpocket, and various RME stuff.. for starters

Hallo, Louis Acresti hat gesagt: // Louis Acresti wrote: This is a Midi synth, isn't it? Then your soundcard won't interfere with it too much. Basically you have three options: PCI/PCMCIA as Carmen mentioned, Firewire or USB. The least expensive solution would be USB and it also will be the one, that is the easiest to setup. Practically all USB soundcards on the market work plug and play with current Linux distributions. Check http://qbik.ch/usb/devices/ for recommendations. I'd say avoid M-Audio USB soundcards, popular cards include the Terratec PHASE26 or the cards by Edirol. You will be limited in the amount of channels, generally only 8 mono channels in CD-quality are possible with USB1.1. Firewire is a bit trickier to set up as it's still quite new, requires rather current versions of various pieces of software, and you have to be more careful what to buy as some cards aren't supported yet (some never will be). So it depends, on how familiar you are with solving Linux-problems and how much time you want to invest. If you want to make music quickly instead of doing system administration then buy a USB card. Personally I would consider to buy a real PCI card for the desktop. They aren't expensive: decent cards with the ICE-chipsets (like the Delta cards by M-Audio) start at about 70 Euro for stereo cards, and they will give better performance than USB or FW. Plus you will save a lot of time by not having to change your setup at home all the time. Ciao -- Frank Barknecht _ ______footils.org_ __goto10.org__