Thanks for the great information. I will address my laptop midi playback with either a new soundfont or the CL Audigy card.
Thanks,
DonM

I use a Audigy 4 pro card ,and you can do so
many things with it,and a briliant sound quality.

Arno

The Saffire by Focusrite is an amazing piece of kit. I'm using it in my PC I have for recording.
http://www.focusrite.com/productdetails.asp?id=38&iRange=5

My gaming PC has the Creative's Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro card which is also very good for music and games sound amazing, if you like to play the odd one.

Shop around there's loads out there.

Hi,
I bought an audigy nx2 usb card so that I had a second slightly less complicated setup for using soundfonts with my laptop than using my software setup.
Software setup for fonts consists of
Forte/Live Synth Pro/Asio4all/ driver /midiyoke /soundfonts.
wheras soundcard setup required
Audigy NX2 /soundfonts.

It's obviously not the best soundcard around, and I've no experience with soundcards, but it works for me.
http://www.soundblaster.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=204&product=91 03

The software set up is far more professional, in that it enables you to use other soft synths as well as fonts, if it's only fonts you want to use, then audigy may be an option for you.

best wishes
Rikki
( disclaimer I'm a hobbyist not a musician haa haa)

[This message has been edited by rikkisbears (edited 11-23-2005).]

Hi Esh,
just out of interest, have you tried your card with "soundfonts". I was originally going to get one of these but I read somewhere that fonts might be a problem, so I got the usb one instead.

Be a bit disapointing if I bought the external one , and this one would have done the job just as well..

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Esh:
[B]

My new laptop had really bad sound (hissy and low volume) so the first thing I did was get the Creative Labs Audigy 2 Z5 Sound Card for Laptops (PCMCIA) for it, which is fairly cheap: about $75. It's excellent (great SNR: 104db) and it comes with some great software.

I'm using a "mk 1" Creative Audigy Platinum (with the external i/o unit) which does me fine for recording from my PSR 3k. The external box is at the end of a 1m+ length cable and so can be placed conveniently at the end of my work space.

Cautionary note: I am using the independant "KX Project" drivers (for EMU chipset soundcards) because the Creative drivers for this particular model are total rubbish running on XP.

I would hope that for the newer models the "proper" drivers work correctly.

I forgot - the KX drivers support soundfonts; in fact if you want to use the sythesiser on the soundcard you have to load a soundfont before the synthesiser appears as a valid midi output. This fooled me for a while!

Depending on your particular usage for a sound card, "latency" may be a concern, especially when using a software synth. Latency is a delay between the time the computer gets a message to play something and the time your sound card delivers it.

For just playing MIDI files, all that occurs is a practically unnoticeable additional pause before the piece starts playing. However, for live keyboard usage (including recording), it may become a significant issue. Here's a web page that explains latency: http://www.pcmus.com/latency.htm

A Google search on "sound card latency" will turn up quite a bit more.

--Barry