This is AMAZING. A 24bit sound card that fits into the PCMCIA of a notebook!!!!! It comes out October 22nd and I will have it. It's $129.99!!!! Check it out:

http://creative.com/products/product...&product=10769

Looks interesting enough but I wonder if it help in the sound volume department on the 3790?

woah!! score!!!

that's a damn high price , but i'm sure it will be worth it, especially if it provides a large performance boost just as the PCI Audigy2 did

I have a question. In the picture of the pcmcia card, the dark grey plasic part... will that stick out of the notebook? I'm also curious what kind of speaker outputs it uses because you can't get thx out of the headphone jack.

Yes the grey part will stick out, and it has a triple 3.5mm jack and SPDIF in/out. It supports 5.1 and 7.1 speakers

You think this is better or the Echo Indigo?

This has to be one of the coolest things I've read about since PCI-E upgradeable graphics modules! Too bad I can't own either one of them right now.

The Creative card will be the obvious choice for gaming and surround sound, as the Echo Indigo is simple stereo output only. The Indigo will probably provide superior sound quality for 2-channel applications, but most users won't be able to tell the difference.

I doubt this will load itself with the processing...it will certainly unload more on the CPU than the desktop PCI Audigy cards...how much is the question.

Basically - I dont like sound cards which dont have visible caps. If the caps are invisible then these are tantalum caps which produce crappy sound. It will work but will it work well is the question.

Just my $0.02

This is really only 'amazing' if you've never seen the Echo Indigo line of cards. As always, Creative is a about a year and a half late technology wise. This thing will support EAX stuff, so it's fine for consumer-level gaming, but for the same price the Indigo provides professional-level signal quality while stripping away EAX the marketing speak that Creative is so good at.

So it's useful. Not 'AMAZING' by any means.

Hopefully this will work, as opposed to the Echo Indigo on my 5680. Apparently it was the ENE PCMCIA chip, according to the echo guys.

It supports ASIO which is great news for Foobar 2000 users and audiophiles. However there is no information about the DAC and Op-Amps that they have used in this one...I am sceptical but I will be willing to give it a shot. I have all sorts of external audio solutions for my latop and the best one so far is the M-Audio Audiophile Firewire...Indigo was a disappointment compared to this firewire baby. Audigy 2nx was nice but more for the gamer...im a music guy.

I disagree to what Khu said. In my book, anything that supports my 5.1 surround sound speaker with distinct 6 channels and comes at a lower than competition prices... deserves an "AMAZING" tag.

I second what someone already said: Most users wont be able to tell the difference between the profesional sound quality with the normal ones.(and by no means am I saying that creative produces "normal" ones. They are excelent in my opinion). Also, Echo Indigo supports stereo. I don't know much about Echo Indigo line, but I'd assume that if the stereo version is already expensive... then the one with equal sound channel a la the PCMIA creative Audigy 2... would blow holes through my pocket then.

GS, what are tantalum caps? Also, how do these technologies compare to the external USB DAC's from Xitel?