Speed variation

[meperson]

Hey all. When i record a track on my laptop it sounds fine. After that when i try to record a second track the two do not match up.i can adjust them all day and they wont sync up. I can get one section to match up but as time goes on they inevitably get off. This is no lacking in ability on my part. I am thinking that it might be the sound card in my lap top. Anyone have any explanations for this or similar probs? If it is the sound card does anyone know of any pcmcia cards that i can plug in to help avert this? Thank you in advance.

[steve]

I am thinking that it might be the sound card in my lap top.

You are probably correct. General purpose computer sound cards are usually built to be good enough for making "peep"s and "pling"s, for Internet voice calls and casual listening to music, but are not usually made for high quality recording or playback. (the often quoted exception to this being Mac computers which are said to have good quality sound cards built in). The synchronisation problem is because the "clock" signal in the sound card is not particularly stable and so drifts over time.

I have only really noticed this problem with some on-board sound cards and some very cheap sound cards. Not all cheap sound cards have this problem. Personally I would call it a "fault", but you can hardly complain about it on a sound card that costs just a few dollars. On a more expensive sound card you could of course complain and ask for a replacement if it has this problem.

On my Acer laptop, there is no noticeable drift at all, but the sound quality is less than brilliant, and microphone recording quality is poor, so I use a Behringer UCA 202 USB sound card. It was cheap, (much cheaper than a pcmcia sound card) but it does the job very nicely. Another inexpensive USB sound card that has been recommended on this forum is the Edirol ua-1ex. Both of these sound cards have line level in and out (if you need to record a microphone with one of these you would need to use a microphone pre-amp or mixing desk). For a little more money you can get nice USB sound cards with built in pre-amps and some also have phantom power for using condenser microphones.

PCMCIA sound cards tend to be more expensive. You should not get the problem with any add on sound card, but to some extent you can expect to get what you pay for. I would expect a Digigram VXPocket V2 to be excellent, but I've not used one and I'm not in the market for spending that amount of money on a laptop sound card.