[deltron3030]

Is there a miniature ASIO soundcard planned for one of the slots? Not needing to carry an external audio interface around when working within a DAW is a major factor that's keeping me on MacOS (both pro audio and consumer use the same driver there).

[botdan]

They publish the CAD files (both mechanical and electrical) on GitHub with instructions on how to manufacture your own expansion cards. I believe the interface within the expansion cards is just standard USB-C. If someone could manage to squeeze all the necessary components within the physical dimensions, it should be possible to make your own soundcard expansion card.

https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/ExpansionCards

[deltron3030]

Maybe addional hardware wouldn't even be needed. Onboard soundcards should be good enough for ASIO (they work fine on Hackintoshs and Core Audio on MacOS). The reason why it's not offered is the licensing I think, it's properietary technology from Steinberg, a German company who invested into Windows pro audio early on and kinda got a first mover advantage there.

I don't know how much licensing would cost, but Framework could possibly offer a driver for the internal card as an addon. Then the slot could be used for a small headphone amp which would be more third party friendly I think.

[torginus]

Do people not remember that these things existed?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Card

You could get standardised addons for laptops, but I guess they disappeared due to lack of interest/better alternatives.

It's weird how the world goes around in circles.

[wmf]

The only things 99% of people used PCMCIA for were networking (modems, Ethernet, or Wi-Fi) and once that got built in people didn't really need slots. The long tail of I/O is now handled by USB/Thunderbolt dongles.

[mixmastamyk]

I had those, but think framework’s design with a flat face for the port is a better design. For example one of my cards was the xylink? ether card with full-size port was the most useful. Looked like this: https://eu.dlink.com/pl/pl/-/media/product-pages/dfe/670txd/...

[duped]

You don't need "professional" drivers for your sound card in 2022, latency and stability are mostly a solved problem. There are a few "nice to haves" about ASIO on Windows but it's almost entirely useless, and it's not like Steinberg is maintaining ASIO anymore.

[aljarry]

I'm sceptic - I can't run anything with reasonable latency without using ASIO4ALL on my built-in Realtek sound card. Mainboard is with B450 chipset, from around 2017.

[duped]

You want to use WASAPI's exclusive mode

[vorpalhex]

This could be done by a third party too

[sprkwd]

This is something I would be interested in too.

[pbronez]

a high-quality DAC would be pretty neat. I'm not sure what connectors would be best though. RCA would be ideal, but those are probably too thick. Mini jack is obvious, but low quality.

It'd be particularly cool to get balanced outputs.