heya guys,

I haven't been dj'ing too long and at the moment I'm using Numark KMX02 decks and have recently been using my laptop connected through the headphone socket to the decks to play some songs from I tunes through the system.

I'm looking to get a dedicated laptop with pro dj software for this purpose which I will run through the Numarks and the question is will i need a really good sound card on the laptop even though I'm running the sound through the decks rather than directly from the laptop? I will invest in a generally good quality laptop with plenty of memory and Ram as well as dual processor but it the soundcard quality issue that's throwing me out??

If any of the above makes any sense to anyone some help would be greatly appreciated!?!?

Psychologically an external sound card will probably sound better

Reason I say that is because I bought one after reading how naff the soundcards were in laptops and felt comfortable thinking how much better the sound was when I used one. One evening I had a senior moment and forgot to use it and plugged straight into the headphone socket. I didn't notice any difference in the sound quality and it wasn't until I was packing away that I realised that I hadn't been using the external card.

Depending on what software you use, you may need two sound sources from the laptop, one to que and one to play (I use the headphone socket to cue and the soundcard to play now) or you may want to have a separate input to the mixer for each virtual deck so you will need an external sound card for that.

The Tapco USB link is a deddicated Audio external soundcard for On the road.Made by Mackie.