I’m looking for something that amounts to a second sound card for my laptop – not a replacement, but one that can work simultaneously and entirely separately from the one built-in. I have two uses for it that are kind of similar.
One is that I’m recording with Audacity from online and external sources. Since some of these recordings take hours, it would be nice if I could do that in background, and do other things (like watch YouTube clips or Netflix) that need sound without interfering the recording.
The other is that I occasionally do gigs as a dj, and it would be nice if I had a separate audio channel to preview and cue music with, again without interfering with a 2nd output to the PA system.
I’m thinking this will need both hardware (on eternal sound card on a USB card, I hope) and some software to route the two separate audio channels between whichever devices or programs I send the channels to and from.