Karaoke Forums

We shied away from laptops for years due to the limitations and poor audio output. However this has changed and here are a few more hints for using a lapop for home or professional systems.We didnt want to spend a large amount on adapting to usb audio and discovered the Griffin iMic It has a lineout and and a line input. It compares very favorably with the expensive usb digital to analogue converters. It also has a line input. For those with multitrack capabilities it gives the options of two stereo outputs and two stereo inputs . On a laptop with a mic input a voltage divider can be used to attenuate a line level to a mic level... Thus 2 out 2 in....

A  usb to ide converter for a very low cost can be bought to attach a big hard drive for a data  base or a cdg compatible cd rom drive..  a usb to ps2 is also availible..

add wireless capabilities and the capabilities are endless.

the newer usb to IDE converter is essentially what the "usb enclosure" cases are.

I haven't heard of the Griffen iMAC yet... hmmmm!

What are you doing for video out?

Yea  Matt I dont think the enclosure does cd drives not sure but ive had a Plextor on this and it works..

This laptop has a 7 pin s-video out which sort of threw me for awhile but a 4pin cable works...We use 3 displays so I miss that on this but that feateure should be availibale sometime. Has anybody solved this yet?

yes, the enclosure does indeed work with the larger 5.25" drives (cd and dvd roms).  If you're using a 3.5" enclosure, you can still use it. It's not PRETTY, but the connections are still the same. So you couldn't put a larger drive on the inside of the device... but you can still use the electronics to connect it.

I just hooked up a plextor drive that way to my new pc. Didn't want to put it inside, so I hooked up the drive to the usb device. Again, looks jury rigged as all get out, but it DOES work.

What's funny is the people at CDRWIN think their product won't work with usb connections... works just fine!