Hi,

Recently a screw came loose in my laptop & shorted out/fried my sound card . I opened everything up and put the screw back in place, but the damage was done. No sound from internal speakers or headphone/line out jack. As I listen to music about 10+ hours a day, and only have my computers for stereo's, this is a big problem. I'm looking into portable usb sound cards, and so far all i've come across is the "audio advantage micro" from turtle beach http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/prod...roducthome.asp

Don't know if it works in linux or not, but ive seen a few (abandoned) newsgroup threads about them, and it's had plenty of favorable reviews so it's the main thing im looking at right now.

In any case, I've been suffering without music on my laptop for about a month now, and I'm about to go on a nice long 13 hour plane ride, so I have to get a usb sound card, and I was hoping people could recommend some that work well with linux (im running gentoo, kernel 2.6.15, latest of most versions of software).

If there aren't any easy choices for linux I might be forced to throw in another hard drive and setup a windows install for the trip, but i've got everything setup just how i like it on my gentoo install, so i'd prefer to avoid this if at all possible.

So, to sum up:
Any good PORTABLE usb sound cards with linux support?
If not, any recommendations for a good portable usb sound card in general?

thanks

Hi Couchmaster,
The only USB sound card that I have experience with is Creative's
Soundblaster Audigy 2 NX an excelent sound card. However it is USB
like the one you are looking at. The Audigy 2 NX can be had in a
PMICIA form also though I don't know about compatibility with Linux.

http://www.mysimon.com/Creative_Soun...-31156120.html

Above is link to the PMICIA version for ~$70.00.
Within this web page is a link to the USB version.
Bought mine 3 years ago at my local Best Buy for $125.00 you can do much better online today.
Anyway I use my card on my Acer Aspire 5672WLMi notebook.
This is my only computer (use it as desktop replacement) and I have
a set of Logitech Z5300 surround sound speakers hooked up to it.
In XP Pro and Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (I have a dual boot setup) it works
great. With Ubuntu linux it works out of the box, although
I did have to disable (by blacklisting from detection at boot up)
my internal sound. The only reason I did this was that even though
I set the Audigy as default sometimes my XMMS player which uses ALSA
would become confused and try to use internal card and error out.
With my Audigy being the only card available to the system this problem
was fixed.
As a side benefit to doing this I can now listen to web based
sounds like Pandora's streaming music service through my external
sound card, something I couldn't do before.
You may have to do something similar in your distro but I doubt
it since you in effect don't have a sound card.
If your your external card is supported by your distro it should
work quite well. Remember though you get what you pay for.
If you get the Creative product you might want to consider
changing to Ubuntu 6.06 LTS a great distro which like I mentioned above
works great with this sound card.
The PMICIA product doesn't require external power so this is probably
your best bet.

http://www.ubuntu.com/ and

a great tutorial if you want to dual boot

http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/index.htm

Good Luck

thanks for the suggestions, im taking a look at the zs notebook card now.

unfortunately switching to ubuntu (or kubuntu as would be my case) isn't much better than switching to windows as far as things being how i like them, but i doubt it's really needed as im sure if it works in ubuntu someone's got it working somewhere in gentoo

I've also spent quite a bit of time with alsa & kde's media control center because of trying to troubleshoot my internal sound. The internal sound still registers with the os' (windows as well) - just no sound comes out hehe. took me a very long time to figure that one out. in any case all that fooling around woudl probably make most sound card installs a much simpler task.

oh and btw - while i normally agree with the "get what you pay for" sentiment i don't think it applies to turtle beach vs. sound blaster. turtle beach makes great sound stuff usually around 25-50% cheaper than comparable sound blaster stuff, and it doesn't come with sound blasters terrible crippling software and drivers (anyone remember the first audigy platinum whos drivers replaced winamp files to make the control not work with winamp?)

anyways, thanks for the suggestion - i had forgotten about pcmcia cards for some odd reason

If your system still "sees" your broke sound card, You will
probably have to blacklist it in linux. Don't know how to do in your distro. Only in Ubuntu. That would force Alsa to use your alternate sound card.
Didn't know about Turtle Beach. Maybe they make a PMICIA card also.
I bet the PMICIA route would be better than USB. More robust etc.
I use the Creative software in XP with no problems, however I only use the drivers and EAX control program.
I don't have much control in linux though, but the card performs quite
well. I even get 5.1 playback with DVD movies. Alsa shows multiple volume controls for this card.

well i just bought the audigy 2 zs notebook version on ebay for a cool 60$ new, straight from creative w/ a 12 month warranty too. Now i just have to wait for it to arrive, and go searching for a way to use 2 pcmcia cards at once or i'll be without my wireless (yes, i prefer music to internet whenever possible)

thanks for the advice and insight frank golden

You could get a USB wi-fi adaptor. Good buy on soundcard!