The Extigy will travel with the present computer to my wife's office when
the Sony notebook arrives. I'm trying to minimize the number of components
that require AC in my office to deal with the heat buildup (I also use
mixing consoles, Tascam CD burners and bulk duplicators, etc.) in the room.
So the idea of something that does not need to be plugged in is attractive.
That's part of why I'm moving to a computer with a lower voltage chip and
less heat output. The current Gateway machine is like having a space heater
in the office.

I only glanced at the Echo card and didn't notice anything the indicates
it's a soundcard, but didn't really look carefully. If I can stay with
Creative Labs products I'll do that simply because all sound editing
software works with them readily.

Scot




" MS" wrote in message
...
If your Extigy still works, and you have no complaints about it, why
replace
it with the MP3+, which is a lower-end product than the Extigy? (Except if
it's for the convenience of not having to plug it into AC.)

I'm not sure why you consider the Echo Indigo I/O not to be a soundcard.
Did
you look at the web page I cited? It looks like a sound card to me.

"Rev. Dr. C. Scot Giles" wrote in message
...
I do professional level audio mixing. I've a long-standing loyalty to
Creative Labs, simply because everyone supports their sound cards. I'm
currently using a Creative Exitgy (for about a year and a half now) and
have
no complaints about it. I'm going to move to Sony's new high end GTR
laptop
and the new MP3 card looked like a good option to replace the Exitgy
(although I could just use that as it also interfaces over a USB) .

Preliminary testing with the MP3+ shows that it is a very capable
soundcard
and I expect a good result.

The Echo PCM card you cited earlier also looks interesting, but it
doesn't
appear to be a soundcard. It looks more like a port replicator that
explicitly adds Line In and Line Out feeds. There is a value in this,
but
the quality of the sound you end up with is determined more by the card
that
is producing the sound than by the nature of the feeds. So using the
Echo
card makes it easier to use whatever soundcard your laptop has, but the
quality of the finished product will be determined by the nature of that
soundcard. The Creative Labs product replaces the soundcard in your
laptop
and gives you standard Creative Labs quality sound. Therefore, the end
result will likely be better.

Scot