Dave,
I'd look seriously at Firewire boxes, if you only need two channel input then the USB route will be fine, but for surround output, some systems won't have the resource beef that firewire usually offers.
EchoFire, FW410, Mackie Spike, USBPre, PreSonus FireStation....these are all really great sub 500.00 tools, IMO

OK - I assume that the Echo PCMCIA cards are not able to do this then?

Will the Firewire/usb boxes be selectable in the audio selections in Vegas?

Thanks for the feedback/input guys.

Dave

OK - I guess my price range is somewhere in the 200-250 range or below (preferably a little below - like the 150-200 range :)

Anyway - what about something like the M-Audio MobilePre USB - is that poor quality? - I'm not using it for music recording etc... (at least not right now) but I am using it for narration recording etc... - thanks for the input guys :)

Dave

(Edit) - also possibly looking at the Fast Track Pro. - any experience with these babies?

BUMP

I'd much rather have the Mobile Pre than the Fast Track pro. It's not a great pre- but it sure beats most any stock sound card. The Fast Track Pro doesn't get good ratings on the DVInfo.net users site, and I've read a lot of complaints about it sounding fairly sterile. it may be that for the price, they're using low end converters.

hmmmm that's intersting - less cost, and more desirable :) - never hurts to win on both accounts - :)

You could maybe consider the new mixer from Alesis
http://www.venuemusic.com.au/Products.asp?ProdID=7413
Before you freak at the price that's Australian dollars, no doubt a bit cheaper in the good old USA.
Beyond what's on that resellers web site I've not been able to find out anymore about this box, even the Alesis site has next to nothing about it but bou it sure looks tempting and it comes in 3 versions with more inputs, just add laptop for complete mobile recording studio.
I'd love to hear from anyone that's got their hands on one, Alesis have a reasonable reputation so I'm hoping it's not junk.
Bob.

Yea - no that's far more power than I'm looking for - I don't want/need a big mixer box or anything - I'm mainly using it to remove a step with one of my consitant clients who does some narrations and puts them onto a recorder that I then have to capture onto a wave file w/ their computers then transfer it to mine - I want to just bring in my laptop and hook it up and record it.

I also am sick of using my DVX for recording narrations as well, just too much hassle to set it all up and tear it all down just for audio recording, not to mention the fact that I need to have massive amounts of space to capture the Vid files and then render the wave before I can delete my vid files of the narrations.

Anyway - thanks for the suggestions Bob, I've learned that you do things on a somewhat larger scale than I do at the moment (usually that is). But your suggestions are always welcome and appreciated :)

Dave

I'ld avoid the Firewire route. USB 2.0 is just as fast as Firewire as far as data rates. Actually 480 Mb/S for USB 2.0 and 400 Mb/s for Firewire. At the end of the day they're about equal where some actually report Firewire is actually faster. The bigger difference is that if the external unit requires external power from the USB or FIrewire port then USB can only supply 500mA of current and Firewire can supply 1.2 amps, so Firewire is better on this front. Probably the most important factor for you is that USB is more of a PC based interface and more available on all PC's , where Firewire is more of a MAC standard. Of course you can get both on either side with additional interface cards. I believe most MACS are coming standard with USB ports, where the PC side you have to go a little bit out of your way for Firewire.

The M-audio interface you mentioned should do well for what you're looking for and is in your price range. The important factors to look at is that if it's a simple 2in/2out interface then the power draw should be suffient enough for the 500mA current draw of the USB port. If you want more I/O than this then you need to make sure the device has it's own power supply option. The other factor you should look at is to make sure the Device has Balanced I/O options. The M-audio device you mentioned has Balance mic inputs, but Unbalanced outputs. This should be good enough for you since your main concern is recording so you have the balanced inputs on the inputs where you need it for those balanced XLR microphone connections. The Echo PCM/CIA option is a good bet also. Look at the specs though and make sure it has balanced mic pre inputs. Phantom Power should also be a concern for you if you're going to use a condenser microphone. This seems like it might be the most compact route to go for you and could also be ideal for your setup. The bad thing is that PCM/CIA is usually only available on Laptops, so if you ever want to move the device to another PC then this is a drawback. Where with a USB 2.0 option this will give you the most flexibility if you ever decide to move the device between PCs. So this is a good reason I would recommend the USB route over the firewire route also.

Almost every new PC i've seen in the last couple of years has had a firewire port standard on the motherboard. Even if not, it only costs about $14 (US) or less to add a firewire card. There is another big advantage with firewire, which is that it is much less drain on the processor than USB. USB connections are almost entirely processor based so the more data you have flowing through USB the more the processor is occupied with that transfer. Firewire has very little processor overhead.

USB 2.0 is just as fast as Firewire as far as data rates. Actually 480 Mb/S for USB 2.0 and 400 Mb/s for Firewire.

Uhh, in theory this is true, but not in practice. The reason to avoid USB for any demanding audio use is that all data must be shuffled through the CPU (perhaps because originator Intel wants to keep their CPUs busy).

Firewire peripherals can shuffle data to and from memory on their own. This leaves the CPU free to do the audio processing, which can take really serious CPU cycles.

Many people think that Firewire is a Mac standard. This is not true. Firewire was standardized by a consortium of companies including Sony, and they share the royalties that are due from manufacturers using it.

If you are just feeding audio from a mic pre to a laptop or PC for simple recording without processing, USB may be OK. If you are doing anything CPU intensive, such as using heavy audio plug-ins or shuffling many tracks, you really should use Firewire.

Amen.
Work with the various cards, you'll almost immediately discover that "USB is just as fast" is a myth. USB uses processor resources for allocation; Firewire doesn't.

"At the end of the day they're about equal where some actually report Firewire is actually faster."

Well, isn't that what I said? The original question was regarding using a laptop. Not ALL laptops come with a Firewire Port, but they ALL come with USB. Yes, newer MB's come with a Firewire option....well that's assuming you purchased a recent MB with it. Every PC MB has had USB on it though for the past 5 years. So if you chimed in for the sake of disagreement, nice job you've just agreed with most everything I said, if you read the entire statement and understand what I was saying. I know you guys like to argue though, so go ahead, I won't appease you. I offered additional information to consider....no more...no less. Instead of offering overkill information, look at what the original question was, which was they where using a laptop for a portable situation recording a VO. Hardly even a sweet for USB 1.1 standards at 12 Mb/s. The other factor is price point in the original post. USB devices generally fit in the budget like the Mobile Pre he mentioned, where Firewire devices will not. I think it's a bit rediculous that "Surround" situation was even mentioned for a portable recording device. Yeah...the guys using a laptop for portable recording of V.O. and he really needs to be concerned with a Surround mixing situation. I guess he better make sure he brings 5 studio monitors and a sub-woofer along with the amplifiers if they're not self powered as well as some portable studio walls so he can make sure his mix environment is good. I'm sure he'll need to check that mono VO record on his surround monitors, to make sure it works properly in surround huh? Good advice understanding the situation though. LOL!!!! I wish one day I'll be as smart as you.

To further answer the question:
"Will the Firewire/usb boxes be selectable in the audio selections in Vegas?"

Yes, both will be recognized in Vegas since they will require the device to install a driver as well as a PCM/CIA option which Vegas will then recognize and be able to access. I use a USBpre by Sound Devices on my laptop, which is a modest 700Mhz P3 machine. I use dual Condenser microphones with Phantom power supplied to both mics by the USBpre and have never had any problems and it's very portable, where everything easily fits in my laptop carrying case.

alright you guys - I would certainly prefer using firewire, but I would have to use an adapter as well, because my laptop is only 4pin - and 6 are required to power something, however USB will power it. as for CPU power, I've got a P4 3.2 so I would assume that I would be able to record a narration on the fly.

no more arguing :)

Dave

If you need to power your card from the laptop and don't have a 6 pin, then you're either relegated to buying a PCMCIA firewire card that has 6 pin like the ADS or the Orange Micro, or using USB. (or using AC adaptor, which isn't very useful in the field) Your mileage will vary from laptop to laptop on USB performance, so be sure you can return the USB card should you need to. I like the M-Audio, the Mackie Spike is a great card too. I've got both. The M-Audio drivers don't work so well on my older VAIO, but no problems at all on my K-37, so long as I've got SP2.
You may or may not want to use this card in your studio setup, I know you've talked about surround quite a bit in various chat rooms, so you'll either need two sound cards, or plan on buying a 2 in/6 out card that will serve both for V/O recording, as well as surround monitoring in your studio.

Just one small thing to watch for, powering a sound card and feeding phantom power to mics could result in quite a reduction in how long your laptop will run off its battery.
There's at least one company now offering a Li-Ion 'power anything' battery which might be good for running some of these audio boxes, assuming of course they will accept external power.
Bob.

Firewire is a better choice than USB in my opinion, but for two-channel recording you may not notice the difference as long as the USB device has it's own USB buss (no conflicts or sharing a hub with other USB devices). I use an RME Fireface 800 in my studio, and have used it on location shoots (it supports firewire 800). RME has some of the best audio drivers in the industry. I've used the Fireface for a shoot on a Powerbook - worked great (other than the app we had to use only supporting 44.1k). The preamps sound far better than a good DV cam's. It is an expensive option though - more than what you posted as your budget, and probably overkill for what you want to do, but with 8 high quality converters it is a good choice for surround monitoring.

For firewire 800 support, if you have WinSP2 you should read RME's support tech database on Firewire 800, as there was a problem with WinSP2 (MS's implementation used the slowest mode - only providing 100Mb/s, and WinSP1 didn't support firewire 800, but there are ways to get around this with SP2).

DSE is right, USB uses cpu resources and will share bandwidth with other devices on the same hub (even if an internal hub), so I don't recommend going that route as a first choice, esp. if you have other USB devices or run multitrack audio. But for most two-channel recording it should be fine. Just be sure the USB audio device is on a separate bus - don't use a hub with audio devices.

Another option for laptop in that price range is Emu's 1616M. The 1616 is $100 less, but the M has better converters. PCMCIA card with breakout box (two mic pres with phantom power).