Don't try to use the laptop built-in soundcard for this. You need a simple 2-channel recording interface such as the M-Audio Mobilepre USB. That package includes Ableton Live Lite music production software, or you can download free audio software such as Audacity or Kristal.

If you want to spend a bit more, go for a FireWire interface, maybe with 4 channels, as you won't outgrow that so quickly.

ive heard it doesnt work well with vista though. do you know anything about that, or any alternatives?

A used Digidesign MBox 1.
Decent mic pres, phantom power onboard.
They go for ~$150 on Craigslist, Pro Tools software included.

stealthy wrote: ive heard it doesnt work well with vista though. do you know anything about that, or any alternatives?

Pity you got the laptop with Vista before asking about the audio interfaces - audio hardware support for Vista is patchy. The M-Audio Mobilepre USB at least has a beta-release driver for Vista32, so it should work.

ok thanks. its ok, this is not my main source of recording, and its just temporary for a few months

Vista should work fine for what you're doing. Look at the side of the box of whatever you want to buy for compatibility and suggested OS's, or go to the website of the vendor to make sure they offer Vista support and/or drivers. Much of Vista handle's legacy software anyway.

And while I'm on the subject, this Vista-bashing is getting a little tedious. MS certainly doesn't need MY help promoting it, but it's nowhere near as bad as some folks claim, and a LOT better than most know, esp those who haven't tried it yet.

Too many people have gotten too complacent with what's out there, and aren't willing to take a chance anymore. it's understandable: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I was certainly one of them, till I had no choice but to upgrade my office PC and my live/remote laptop. Both are running with Vista, without a bit of trouble. In fact, I've had no serious compatibility issues when it comes to audio drivers, software, etc.

Go ahead, take a chance. :wink:

There is some hardware and software that still has issues with Vista. Vista 32-bit versions are basically an upgrade of Windows XP media center edition. Some manufacturers of both hardware and software have not in the past supported XP media center edition nor Intel Celeron-based processors. Companies such as AVID & DIGIDESIGN/Pro tools, don't support Intel Celerons nor XP media center edition. Adobe does not support XP media center edition for their Premier Pro 2 & 3 video editing product. But let's face it, they are having to bite the bullet to make their stuff compatible with all versions of Vista, since it's the new deal.

Waiting to run out of solder before I byte a bullet.
Ms. Remy Ann David

JoeH wrote:
And while I'm on the subject, this Vista-bashing is getting a little tedious. MS certainly doesn't need MY help promoting it, but it's nowhere near as bad as some folks claim, and a LOT better than most know, esp those who haven't tried it yet.

My beef with Vista isn't anything to do with the traditional "It's new and it's Microsoft, so it can't be any good..." Heck, I was even an early adopter of Windows ME....(Oopss.)

My biggest gripe is the number of versions that they've released. Granted, they're basically shell extensions of 2 or 3 viable versions, but in total there's over a dozen total OS's in the Vista line-up.

Also, my other gripe came from a system which we used at my day job which we upgraded to Vista during evaluation prior to an end-of-fiscal-year-buy.

We put Vista and Office 2K7 as fresh installs on a machine which was more than qualified for the tasks. Opening a Word Doc on the new platform took.....drumroll please.........11 minutes. Seriously. Double click the doc, wait 11 minutes and VOILA...the document finally would open.

When we worked with our MS rep to explain the issues, the final answer we got back was..."yes, we're aware of this issue on several machines and a subsequent service pack will help alleviate these issues."

Personally, I just got a new laptop built and thankfully, most manufacturers are still offering XP as a free option on their machines. I took it.

Nothing against Vista. I'm just happy with XP as it is not the unknown to me.

Just my $.02.

DigiDesign has released a Vista version of ProTools. Check the web site.