Sole Signal

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/MK461C-main.html This is what I'm looking at to use with FL Studio. I found it for 150 bucks instead of the 320 as advertised on the site. Look pretty decent? Oh yeah-I don't have Producer edition yet; do I need it to use a keyboard with FL? (Maybe I should ask this on Looptalk)

Here's my specs: AMD Athlon 3000+ 512 RAm Runs FL Studio fine, except for the onboard soundcard issues. I have the Audigy 2 NX USB soundcard, but I really think the SoundMax stock card the laptop came with runs FL better. When I have lots of EWQL silver stuff loaded, it gets really cranky and is rather annoying to work with. Moral of the story: more RAM, the better. A desktop is really the way to go, but if you have your eyes set on a laptop, you should be fine with any new one.

Didn't even think of that. That's awesome if it works smoothly. Speaking of soundclick, check the signature.

Well, to tell the truth, I've had FL for about 3 months, and I KNOW I'm not using it to its full potential. Takes much more time than a tutorial would provide. Anyways...Let's see...a quick "Reason 3 Tutorials" yahoo search provides:" http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=reason+3+tutorials&rs=0&fr2=rs-top&toggle=1&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-web-t I'm guessing the third and fourth results would be handy. Cheers.

Don't rip on yourself. Who cares if what you have made isn't up to the "standards" of this site...as long as you are pleased with it--what else matters? Sounds like your friend likes your stuff--so you already have one fan. I used Noteworthy Composer for a long time (too long, in fact) and still was able to make some decent songs. Stick to it. Everyone has to start somewhere. Ask anyone here and they will tell you that.

Yeah, it would be completely for music-making. That EMU1616 card is a bit out of my budget right now--maybe sometime in the future. Legion, have you used the Line-In for recording? Basically what I'm looking for is a decent card that makes using FL less annoying with latency issues, and enables relatively good recording with FL (the ASIO support.) On Ebay a couple of ZS's are around 50 bucks currently, so I may try to pick it up at a price like that. About the speakers...what I'm looking for is a set that pushes enough bass and gives a crisper, cleaner, feel so I can get an idea of what it would sound like on other sets (car stereo, room stereo...). The Labtec set I have now just isn't able to give me a good sense of what the bass is actually doing, plus it just sounds weak. I'll look into the headphones, but too much headphone use wears on me after a while. Tuition costs + College books + EWQL + FL and a few plugins + both White Sox DVD's = not much money left to buy a better sound card and speakers

Does anyone use this card on their laptop? I'm really in need of upgrading--right now I'm using the Audigy 2 NX USB soundcard, and the Directsound latency is crap. The ASIO4ALL driver doesn't help either. I was wondering if anyone here uses this card, or knows someone who uses it. I'm assuming the ASIO 2.0 support it has will be quite a significant difference from the Directsound 115 ms latency I'm experiencing now. And...what the heck I might as well ask what a decent pair of speakers will cost me. Is the Name-Your-Brand (Creative...etc) 5.1 computer speaker set at Wal-Mart a decent buy? I'm using a really old Labtec set that has 20 watts of power or somewhere around there. The Logitec (I think that's what it is) at Wal-Mart is about 70 bucks and carries 120 watts. Just curious as to what you guys use. I'm just starting to really get into this stuff, so that would explain my never-ending questions.