Any such thing as a SPDIF/USB or FW dongle?

[EngineEars]

Is there a way to get into a laptop digitally without having to have a seperate box? I'd like a dongle type device that is USB or FW to SPDIF. I realize MBoxes are not that bulky, but I need ultra portable. Any ideas?

[Gerax]

Several years ago an engineer friend of mine bought a Digigram VX Pocket for his PC laptop: it's an PCMCIA card that has a breakout cable with balanced stereo analog I/O, AES and Spdif I/O (on XLR and RCA connectors respectively). It did sound good and was truly portable, but I guess if you're going to use it with Pro Tools it's not going to work, only Mbox for that app (unless you go with PT Free...but I think that wouldn't be a very smart move). Was great with Wavelab or Sound Forge though.

Hope this helps

L.G.

[matt thomas]

have spdif but not much smaller than mbox:


http://www.audiomidi.com/common/cfm/...t.cfm?pid=3911
http://www.audiomidi.com/common/cfm/...t.cfm?pid=3275
http://www.audiomidi.com/common/cfm/...t.cfm?pid=5555

have optical, and small dongle like:

http://www.audiomidi.com/common/cfm/...t.cfm?pid=6025
http://www.audiomidi.com/common/cfm/...t.cfm?pid=4034

or pcmcia with spdif, even smaller than dongle (once in the card slot)

http://www.audiomidi.com/common/cfm/...t.cfm?pid=1756

[Gerax]

The last link is exactly what I was talking about.

L.G.

[EngineEars]

Thanks, I guess I should have got the Powerbook with PCMIA instead of the iBook. Too bad some techie geek can't mod a spdif jack onto the side, like the power adapter jack. That'd be worth a few hundred bucks for me to be able to do. (Is Steve Job's listening?)

[junior]

have you checked out m-audio interfaces? i know they make some small mobile interfaces with spdif i/o and digi has a version of pro-tools le that supports these interfaces directly...

http://m-audio.com/products/en_us/Pr...ered-main.html

[initself]

Originally Posted by Gerax

Several years ago an engineer friend of mine bought a Digigram VX Pocket for his PC laptop: it's an PCMCIA card that has a breakout cable with balanced stereo analog I/O, AES and Spdif I/O (on XLR and RCA connectors respectively). It did sound good and was truly portable

I just got one. I had a lot of trouble with drivers on Windows XP. Wouldn't work with the digital input into Emulator X2. Lots of clicks and pops. Latency didn't go below 13ms. It sounded a little harsh (from the headphone amp) at times.