PoducateMe: Practical Solutions for Podcasting in Education
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by your system’s audio card. While most interfaces feature phantom power to bring
connected condenser microphones up to line level, you should verify the presence of this
feature before you purchase the equipment.
As illustrated in Figure 12, audio interfaces are available as internal and/or external
components that may connect to your computer in a number of different ways:
Figure 12: Audio Interfaces.
(A) External interfaces connect to your computer’s USB or FireWire port.
(B) For laptop users, PC Card (also known as a PCMCIA card) interfaces plug into your
system’s CardBus/PC slot. Note that modern systems no longer feature a PC slot to
accommodate these cards. A newer, faster standard known as “ExpressCard/34” and
“ExpressCard/54” has been introduced to replace the PC card.
ExpressCard
ExpressCard/34 is a smaller (34mm wide) card that will fit into a MacBook Pro and
other systems’ ExpressCard/34 slot. There is also an ExpressCard/54, which at
54mm is wider than its /34 brother. The /54 slot is 20mm wider so that it can
accommodate cards such as hard drives based around 1.8-inch drives and Compact
Flash adapter cards.
34mm and 54mm ExpressCards
Unlike PC Cards, ExpressCards may also be used with desktop systems featuring a
compatible external slot. Modern laptops have dumped PC Card slots in favor of
ExpressCard slots.
B
A
C
D
