external sound card??

[DISEMBOWELLED Profile]

hey there a quick question thats been concerning me a bit recently

I use ableton for DJing. my laptop is a humble dell inspiron 1300 but for the most part its done ok in live situations with ASIO4ALL drivers. however recently ive started getting loads of dropouts and stuff, even when im not doing anything like sending midi signals, just literally 1 song playing and I'm getting drop outs. Also it gets slow as fuck when I try using files off my external harddrive.
obviously this is totally unacceptable, it sounds shit.

Sooooo am I right in thinking that an external soundcard will solve this problem of ridiculous amounts of dropouts?? If so, how much would I have to spend to get one good enough to sort it ???

any help appreciated

[ADJ Profile]

-first check the audio buffer settings in your preferences !- can cause drop-outs

-a soundcard should sort your probs out if the above won't work. try Emu, M-Audio for stuff in your price range. some more memory would be good as well !!

[skone Profile]

emu cards is very good

[Rob G Profile]

ADJ is right, settings are really important to get right. dont set the latency too low if your laptop isnt up to it.

I use the Maya44 USB which has 4in 4out audio but no midi. Its excellent!
and relatively cheap at about £50.

One thing to be careful about if you're buying a USB soundcard; if you are using USB for the HD also you could run into trouble. Best to use firewire for the HD or get a PCMCIA soundcard.

[Rob G Profile]

Check you have USB 2 drivers installed, not 1.1.........