Sound cards for laptops
In the previous post we looked at the reasons why you might want to upgrade to a specialist sound card rather than stick to using the sound chip provided “on-board” the mother board in your computer. Of course having the sound just come with the computer rather than having to go out and buy a separate sound card is a great time saver and makes things simple if you do not really need a very high quality sound. With a standard desktop however you will always have the option to go out and buy a new card and be able to fit it reasonably easily.
Sound cards for laptops
But what happens if you have just bought a laptop? All laptops these days have sound capabilities, provided “on-board”, but of course because of the nature of the construction you can’t just open it up and install a new sound card. So what to do?
Well there are actually plenty of options for those people who do want to upgrade their laptop sound capability, with products like the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook Sound Card. This is a product that will slot into an Express card slot which you might find on a new laptop, while a product like the Creative AUDIGY 2 ZS notebook card will fit into the PCMCIA slot on an older laptop. A third option would be an external USB connected product like the Trust 510EX USB 5.1 Sound Expert External. Plenty of options so happy listening!
Have you upgraded the sound capability of your laptop?
Posted on May 14th, 2008 by stephen
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There is a lot more to this than has been mentioned and the facts are not all set out here on the table. Sure you can buy the SB X-Fi card and end up with audio worse than what was put on the motherboard. I have tried this card on not one but FOUR brand new laptops, two running XP and two running Vista. All with the same FAILING results. There is no “what you hear” capabilities of this card (Creative Labs told me specifically that it is not supported on this card AND it does not have anywhere near the functions of the desktop model), along with a LOT of audio issues with it too. Just for an example, audio sounds like it is under water with a reverb that should not be there! I went back and forth between pc laptop companies, (HP, Dell, & Toshiba), and Creative trying to resolve this, everyone was blaming the other guy but when it came down to it, the issues were all the same on each and every laptop! This to me gets deducted to, it’s not the laptop but the sound card itself.
There is another viable option you can always go, will cost more, but if you are dead serious about using an external card and have found one you truly like, I suggest purchasing a duel adapter. (I find it odd this was not even mentioned as a choice or option in the above post!)The duel adapter simply plugs into the express card slot, run the software for it, (drivers) then plug your PCMCIA card into it, run the sound card drivers and viola! You are up and running. This was the best solution I have yet to find. My new laptop even has Vista running on it and did not run into one glitch setting up my old Audigy2 sound card on it! Like I said, it will run a bit more for the cost but at least it will do exactly what it was meant to do and you will get what you paid for in the end.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:03 amKit
Many thanks for the detail feed back on your experiences with the SB X-Fi card. In my post I was mainly looking at the available options rather than doing a detailed review, which isn’t the main function of the blog.
However I think you are right about the use of a dual adapter and as you say should of been included as one of the options.
Thanks again for the comment!
September 4th, 2008 at 12:21 am