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Hello

Oops Sorry for the glitch,
Hello once again,
I hope to enhance the capacity of my present digital piano using my laptop, a sound library and USB sound card. Can anyone recommend a reasonably good sound card which won't pinch the pocket
George

Take a look at the EMU 0404 external USB interface. It's very popular. I got one recently for $199 and am quite happy with it. I use it with Windows 7, but it works fine with XP or VIsta also.

I have a cheap Creative external USB soundbox (£20 in Engish money). I can't tell any difference in sound quality from a unit costing ten times as much. Unless you need MIDI support and microphone recording facilities, I'm not sure the extra cost of something like the EMU is really necessary. Just my $0.02, of course.

I recently set up my 2001 Schimmel silent piano with an EMU 0404. I'm very happy the way this works with Pianoteq. Both the midi and the audio-out work great.
I tried it with Ivory but the latency was too disturbing. That might also be because i have Ivory installed on my C: drive. They do advise a dedicated disk for the samples, and I might try that when I can get around to it.

With Pianoteq, I had fine results using an old USB sound card that cost about $50 in 2006 along with a basic USB MIDI interface to connect the keyboard to my laptop.

If money is an issue, and you do not find the need to connect the MIDI directly to the soundcard, I think you'll do fine with a similar approach -- and you won't need to shell out for the high-end gear. A USB soundcard around $50-100 (something like this) and a USB/MIDI interface (something like this) should work. I haven't researched that particular model of sound card, though, so it's a good idea to see what the best-reviewed USB card in that class would be.

The only reason I had a USB sound card, incidentally, is because the on-board sound on my laptop is busted. If you haven't yet, I would see if your internal sound can handle Pianoteq without resorting to an external card. You can test that without hooking up your actual keyboard (by clicking wildly along Pianoteq's virtual piano).

More detail about the intended use would help. When you don't provide much details you find that the replies are all of the form "I have XXX it works fine"

I'm guessing that you want to run a software instrument on the computers that have the sound played through this audio interface. If so look for an interface that has MIDI built-in. This will cut the number of cables in half, makes for a neater setup. Prices range for $100 to $200. But you will find that buying good monitor speakers is a big job as you really should audition them and buy from a place tht has a good return policy.

You should tell as about the system you wabnt to setup, kind of DP and so on.