I just bought a new laptop that's quite good in most every way...except for the soundcard, the one thing I couldn't crank up in specs. Considering that recording audio is the main thing I wanted to do with this laptop, that kinda blows. Thus, I've been looking for a good external soundcard upgrade. Having already tried one such card and discovered to my woe that none of my recording applications will disdain to work with its crappy USB 1.1 connection, I've decided to take my next prospective cart to the court of public opinion.

If anyone out there owns the Emu 0202, please offer advice or warnings. I'm looking to record using Cubase and Soundforge - will this card work well with them? Also, does Emu's claim of "Ultra-low latency" mean my VST instruments will actually play within two seconds of my pushing a key on my keyboard? (lest you think I'm exaggerating, that's exactly what happens with the current on-board card) Finally, despite its being a complete piece of junk, I still want to be able to use my notebook's on-board soundcard when I'm not recording (just to listen to music with headphones, etc.) - will the Emu 0202 play nicely with it, or will I have to uninstall the other sound card's drivers or something equally draconian?

I don't know about the emu 0202 but you should take a look at the pcmcia sound cards, too, as they're a kind of pci expansion cards for laptops.

My notebook actually has an ExpressCard slot instead of a PCMCIA card - I was looking at the Creative Audigy notebook card before I realized the two aren't compatible.

I have had one for about a month.
The Good
Amazing Sound
Excellent Build Quality
No Power Cord needed and long USB cable provided
Headphone Jack + Stereo out at once
Driver can be installed without the rest.

The Bad
Drivers are not available from CD
Drivers are a not the best. But EMU probably will release newer drivers
I have trouble playing audio sometimes but when I close all my programs it works again.

Pretty odd idea to use onboard sound as the amps and dacs will be useless, whereas the 0202 usb quite good.

As for latency I don't know, why don't you ask on the "production forums" where EMU has a forum. USB will give more latency than PCI but the difference is in milliseconds not seconds.
Now your current issue is probably an issue with the software you are using. When you press play on a normal audio player, does it take 2s for something to be heard? If not then your VST instruments or the software that is hosting them is causing the delay.

One question? What laptop do you have that has an express card slot but is stuck at USB 1.1?

The laptop has USB 2.0 and firewire - it was the external soundcard that was stuck at USB 1.1.



That's possible - the software happens to be Cubase, and I was looking at the default instruments that came with it, so I assume that if it is a software issue, it's just a setting I'm missing and not poor quality software. I tried turning off the "delay compensation" thing that the manual suggested, but this made little or no difference. Any suggestions?