M-Audio external sound card.

[manick]

I have just bought a new laptop at a bargain price and that is one of the main reasons I got it.

 

Model = COMPAQ Presario CQ61 - windows 7 64bit.

 

AMD dual core, 4 gig ram, 3 x usb, 1 x hdmi, 1 x external monitor, 1 x digital media slot, 1 x RJ-45, 1 x RJ 11 and lighscribe optical drive.

 

Not a bad machine and it does work well.

 

Only problem I have is no Firewire port and I need this to be able to connect to my studio M-Audio firewire family external sound card.

 

The easy option would be to buy a new usb sound card but I really do not want to do this as the M-Audio card I have cost severall hundred £s and is superb in sound & quality.

I thought I would be able to use a USB to Firewire adapter/converter but it does not work when I tried it.

 

My question is - Is it possible to have a firewire port fitted to the laptop or is there a device I can buy that will convert or adapt USB to Firewire?

 

Any help or advice with this would be very much appreciated.

 

Leason learnt..... not always a bargain it could end up costing more than you saved. lol

[Dalo Harkin]

Do you have a PCMCIA slot on the MOBO, if not then not really much you can do, USB to firewire adapter would not really work anyway because firewire is capable of faster transfer rates than USB. It would 'work' but would more of a 'bodge' not as good as firewire itself.

 

Hope this helps

 

Incase you dont know what a PCMCIA slot looks like

http://www.quatech.com/email/images/pcmcia-slot.gif

Edited August 4, 2010 by Dalo Harkin

[Plastic Nev]

Also, regarding fitting a firewire port, it is highly unlikely it could be done unless the motherboard has the facility built on it. I have noticed that Firewire is becoming a bit obsolete and not being fitted to a lot of newer computers, or even auxiliary equipment either.

Possibly because there has been some talk of USB3 coming soon, which should have a much higher speed again.

If you do have that slot though a firewire card should be available to fit it. In my case I have the older soundblaster card in my now four year old XP lappy, though I think that may be the earlier type of expansion slot in mine, not too sure.

Nev.

[manick]

Thanks for trying guys but it's what I expected.

 

I have a 4 port PCMCIA firewire card as I use it in my trusty 4yr old Acer laptop that has now seen better days has it has had a very tough life.

 

Looks like I now have 2 choices:

 

Buy a new external USB sound card which I know from past experience can reult with latency issues.

 

Buy another laptop with firewire port/s or with a PCMCIA expansion slot.

 

USB 3? not heard about that but it would be really good if USB were to perform on a par with firewire, its a shame firewire is not fitted to many new machines these days as it does out perform USB for high speed data transfer in audio aplications.

 

I should have bought the Macbook pro as that was my original plan. lol.

 

Anyway thanks again for your interest.

[Plastic Nev]

Another strange thing about advancing technology is that I heard about the concept of USB3 early last year, but nothing further since, however it has still been going on in the background with the release of new equipment earlier this year.

have a look here for a series of interesting FAQ's about it all-

 

SuperSpeed USB 3.0 FAQ

 

All in all though, it is the usual thing of making something redundant as quickly as possible in order to make you buy something to replace the old.

Nev.