[Lowfer] Soundcard question

[Steve Dove]

Hi Dick,

Most laptop 'soundcards' suck in all important regards.  The 
USB pod idea is a good one, and shouldn't interfere with you 
bringing in the SDR-IQ via USB either.  Most programs 
nowadays let you choose between the various available 
soundcard options.  The processor won't even blink at the 
additional requirements, no issue there.

The quick-and-dirty way to deal with this:  route the audio 
out of the 'puter (after SDR-IQ) into the line-in of the USB 
pod.  (Yes, I know it's cringe-worthy, but it's simple.) 
Similar to your rather incestuous-sounding arrangement with 
wiring the output to the input of the onboard 'soundcard'.

If you're in a hurry, Circuit City have a (distressingly 
lurid flashing greeny-chartreusy) 16-bit USB pod for about 
$30, but you can find the equivalent online for much less, 
<$20.  A 'Creative' one would be about $50, but be 
significantly better quality (not that that really matters 
with Argo/SpecLab stuff, but VERY significant if bringing 
receiver I/Q pairs in) and possibly less fuss to get working.

          Cheers,

                  Steve




Richard Goodman wrote:
> 	I recently purchased a Gateway laptop. As well as using it for business
> purposes, I was hoping to take it out in the boonies with my SDR-IQ and do
> some listening to LF frequencies from really noise free locations. Alas ...
> It doesn't have a full duplex soundcard. It works fine with the SDR-IQ but
> there are no inputs on the audio control panel to route audio from "What you
> hear" or "WAV/MP3" as an input to Argo or Multipsk (or other like programs).
> I can get as an input, the microphone jack and can loop the audio from the
> headphone jack back into the microphone jack with an audio cable. That gives
> me an input to Argo but it's really kludgey. Would a external USB soundcard
> work in this application? I would have the digital stream from the SDR-IQ
> going into one USB port and the digital stream required by the soundcard
> running from the other USB port. It's a new machine with an AMD processor.
> Could the PC handle this throughput? Has anyone else run into this delimma?
> I never thought to check out the soundcard before I purchased the machine.
> 
> 73
> Dick, WA3USG