Audio Cards, Which one is for me? Options

[gleit]

I'm about to dive into computer music, and am wondering which audio card I'll need (and why). My controller will have USB out (it'll be a GI-20 pitch/midi converter triggered by a piccolo bass for low latency), and I plan on running that into a G4 powerbook (12 inch, spr drive with 60 gb hard drive and 640MB memory). There I plan on using MAX/MSP for building synth sounds to trigger and cubase or reason for sequencing. I want to do all this for a live perfomance setting, so I need things to be fast.

I know nothing about computer music, so I'm lost as far as which soundcard I need (and why).

Please help,
Jason Lange

[boze]

i should add that i really think usb1 was never intended to be using for audio i/o, and i that as a pbook owner a fw interface would be a real treat if there was one that met your needs and had good osx drivers and wasn't too expensive for what it offered.

i'm curious to see how the advent of usb2 affects the laptop soundcard market because vastly superior bandwidth of fw over usb is going to be completely negated once usb busses on laptops are all usb2.

anyway, good luck and post again with what you're hoping to do as far as recording and playback options. and have fun with max/msp!