Z-5500 and external soundcard

[Cristatus]

I am in the proccess of really considering buying a Logitech Z-5500, but I also need an external sound card, because I am a laptop user.

I was wondering if this was a good choice. I know Hercules has nome nice products from experience (I have one of their products, but I can't remember the name of it, but I can tell you that some of it is external, and is blue in color).

Anyways, I was also wondering if there were any other decent alternatives, that weren't too expensive.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Cristatus]

bump for the americans. (maybe i'm too early)

 

[Cristatus]

So, I guess nobody knows about it?

 

[alcoholbob]

Why do you need an external soundcard? I find most laptop onboard cards to be sufficient for playback with multimedia speakers.

 

[Cristatus]

How am I supposed to hook up the 5 speakers when I only have a stereo output and nothing else (except USB or PCMCIA) for outgoing sound?

 

[alcoholbob]

Well if you have some sort of silent refusal to getting a PCI-based notebook solution, then yes, I guess you have no choice but to get an external card.

 

[Cristatus]

Well, I didn't even know there was a "PCI-based notebook soltuion". Care to point me towards some?

 

[alcoholbob]

Audigy 2 Notebook for internal, Audigy 2NX for external.

 

[Cristatus]

Have you tried both of them, and if so, which one is better?

 

[Brentx]

The Audigy 2 Notebook is a great add on for any media laptop. It does full hardware sound acceleration on the PCMCIA card itself, and is just as good as any other Audigy 2 ZS card out there. I would stay away from external stuff, because it uses USB, which tends to eat the hell outta your CPU cycles... and the sound quality is usually worse on external stuff.