Dual sound card or 2 channels for laptop DJ mixing

[djshabz]

Hi
I am in the process of buying a new sony vaio laptop for around £900!
been reading this post but think it only half helps. Basically it only comes with the onboard sound card which they say is of high quality. I am a DJ and basically need to have two separate outputs (so that I can mix on one (eg headphones), while having a second bit of sound that is my main output that the whole club can hear. What I'm confused about is: do I need a dual sound card or do I just need a sound card with 2 channels? Also if the 2 channel thing will work - will it still be in stereo or mono (as mono in a club just will not work for obvious reasons!)
Would really appreciate some clarification on this

 

[festerovic]

So, you need two sets of 2 channel output? Also, you will need a media program that allows you to specify which audio device you want to play out of. Some don't let you, not sure about WMP. Which media programs do you use for DJ work?

For instance, I have 3 audio devices - a sound blaster card, a guitarport device, and the onboard sound. If I want to play music from my pc, I can go to the windows sound panel and choose the hardware device I want.

But what if I want to play music from WMP to my desktop speakers via the onboard sound, and then play a game using the 5,1 system attached to the soundblaster card? This is kind of the same scenario as you have. You need the machine to output two separate audio streams to two different devices.

There are two options:
1: Get another sound device so that the laptop has two hardware devices capable of outputting 2 channel audio - easy, there are lots of USB sound card (box?) that can do this.
2: Your onboard audio on the vaio can output two different streams, 1 to the headphone jack, and one to a different jack (maybe a line out or some other heaphone sized jack) - this will depend on the driver/software that comes with vaio. It may or may not, but I have seen onboard sound that could do this, so its not impossible.

Best bet is to get a USB sound card.