I use laptops exclusively & I don't find any limitations that can't be worked around, I prefer a laptop board due to it's size & the fact that it is designed & set up to be used in a mobile environment, power efficient,
there are really high end firewire soundcards & dac's, so this is not a limiting factor, I am running an apogee mini dac off one, into a dbx driverack, this is about as serious as audio on a pc can get, not a limiting factor there at all
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