Laptop (mobile) recording

Yes! You can use your laptop for audio recording, provided you have the appropriate hardware and software. Although you can use your built in soundcard for recording, the results are going to be far from professional. Instead, consider a USB or PCMCIA audio card designed for laptops.

My current little home studio uses an Edriol UA 20 USB Audio capture device (which is about the size of two cigarette packs) Very handy in the back bedroom type environment where space is at a premium, my initial reason for using a laptop in preference to a PC

Here is a picture of my bedroom "studio" which sits on a standard PC desk.

It allows me to record audio (guitar tracks, vocals, mandola, fiddle etc) in to my software for editing then pop the results out on the internal CD burner of my laptop.

The Edriol unit can accept input from Mic, Line and even guitar level signals. The audio is converted at 24-bit quality and is transferred to your computer via industry standard low latency ASIO, MME, WDM drivers for compatibility with all major sequencing platforms, the input signal may be also monitored directly in hardware. Outputs include analogue, digital and headphone.

The built-in MIDI in and out utilize Edirol's Fast Processing Technology for super accurate MIDI timing with any sequencing software on Mac or PC platforms and can be used with both OMS or Free MIDI drivers on the Apple Macintosh. The UA-20 requires no external power supply and is ideal for use by mobile laptop or Powerbook users. The unit ships with drivers for Windows 98, 2000, Me, XP and Mac OS 8.5, 9.x and may also be used with the native USB audio drivers that are included with both Mac & PC.

THIS IS ONLY ONE OF MANY SUCH DEVICES

I purchased mine online for around £165.00 in October 2002.  Go surf around like I did, there is plenty to read and learn. If you think about it you for ever.. there will never be a clear outright best buy, but with all the features including Midi in and out the UA20 offers good value for money and works well for me .