New Sound Card?

When I bought my Lenovo T500, I made the mistake of getting it with the integrated sound card, thinking integrated cards are pretty decent these days, and that a discrete one isn't worth the money. However, I am now plagued with crackling and stuttering audio, for example whenever I open a new web page.
The integrated card in my T500 is a Conexant High Definition SmartAudio 221.

First of all, is there any software solution to this problem? Could this be a driver-related problem?

Assuming that this problem is due to insufficient processing power allocated to sound, I have considered getting an external sound card. Though I would much rather prefer ExpressCard or PCMCIA models (due to their low profile when hooked up), I am also willing to try out a USB model.

Which external sound card would best be able to overcome this crackling problem??

 

Part of the reason you get so much noise with notebook integrated sound cards is because they are inside of your notebook, and with all the other electronics so close it it you get interference from them. So the most important thing you can do is get it out of your notebook. I would opt for a usb/firewire one, but I've also heard good things about the expresscard solutions too.

I personally use an Echo AudioFire2 while at home, and a Turtle Beach Audio Advantage Micro while on the go. The Echo AF2 could work while on the go if I had a powered firewire port, but netbooks don't have those.

 

Does the Turtle Beach Micro have onboard processing? I read in a review a while back that if it doesn't, it can make such a crackling problem worse, by increasing the CPU load.

For expresscard solutions, I'm looking into the Creative Soundblaster X-Fi and the Echo Indigo IOx. I know that the Echo has onboard processing, but I'm not so sure about the Creative. However, the Echo is much more expensive than the creative ($230 for the Echo vs $90 for the Creative). Echo also has a model (Indigo IO) that uses PCMCIA instead of Expresscard, which is much cheaper ($80). Ideally, though, I'd like to go with expresscard, so I can use it on future laptops.

Does the Creative Soundblaster X-fi have onboard processing? Would it be able to solve this crackling problem?

 

Take a look at these amps/DACs (over a Creative solution any day IMO):

http://www.headphone.com/headphone-amps/amplifiers.php

 

im looking at the X-fi express card too... why wouldn't you choose that? besides of the price, which IMO is not bad....

 

Creative has had a lot of issues with driver support in Vista (even on their support forums). I don't know about 7, but given the past history with Creative and drivers, you might have some issues enabling all the features. Plus I believe the X-Fi solution in Creative offloads to the CPU, though I believe most (if not all) solutions under <$100 do too. I personally would go for an external solution since I don't think the ExpressCard has as much shielding against noise.

 

Creative is better off licensing their stuff to other companies like Asus and Auzentech. Those companies actually make better products using creative's tech and provide updated driver support all the time.

Creative only support their products only until they release something new. They don't have the smartest people making drivers...

I agree with sgogeta4, expresscards and usb solutions end up taxing the cpu...

 

The Echo Indigo Io that I was looking at ($80) has on-board DSP.
http://www.echoaudio.com/Products/CardBus/IndigoIO/index.php

Doesn't this mean that it doesn't offload onto the CPU?

 

I believe using USB itself requires CPU cycles, though I don't think it will be significant with any fairly current C2D processor or greater. It would definitely be less than onboard sound, but comparing different external solutions I'm not sure how much variation there will be in CPU usage.

 

In my particular case, the distortion of music is mainly stuttering and mild slowing down, typically during bursts of CPU usage. (There really aren't any pops or fizzles from interference (I had a lot of interference from a previous laptop, and this doesn't sound like that).) So I guess since the Echo Indigo Io has its own signal processor, I'll try that out and see if it helps. If it doesn't, I can always return it and look into getting a firewire-based solution, or one of those DAC's you suggested.

On a side note, are DAC's supposed to be used in conjuntion with one of these external sound cards, or instead of them?

 

If its making noise like that then you've probably got a ground problem. Other than that its just picking up noise. My notebook makes a TON of noise, so much that it will give me a headache if I use it with my headphones. But when I hook up my turtle beach micro all of that noise goes away.

I would suggest the Echo over the creative. I haven't actually tried the Indigo but I know Echo builds nice products.

 

Sound cards have DACs to convert audio from a digital file (say from an mp3) into an analog file for the speaker to pick up. You can use amps in conjunction w/ DACs to boost power.