External sound card

I am looking to purchase an external soundcard that is moderately priced.

Hello. "Moderately priced" can mean anything depending on the frame of reference, but you can see devices of all prices at an online store like Amazon.

The term "sound card" itself doesn't have much meaning unless one is talking about an actual card that fits into a slot inside the case of desktop computer tower. Since we are not talking about an actual card, you are looking for a device that has some of the functions & features of a sound card.

All of the usb audio devices have the basic function of a sound card, which is to convert audio to digital and back again (DAC & ADC). Beyond that, it is a matter of which features you need to accomplish your purpose. The cheapest ones have a mono mic input jack and a stereo output jack. They are all plug and play and use the Windows usb audio driver, so no driver to install.

If you need a stereo line-in input -- look for a device that has an input jack specifically for line-in, because you cannot use the basic mic jack on these devices as a line-in jack.

If you are looking for a name brand consumer product, check out the Sound Blaster 5.1 which does have a line-in jack.

If you are looking for other features or a higher quality product, let me know, but I don't know of any that have their own memory. If we were talking about an actual sound card, the better ones had dsp processing chips to take the load off of the computer's cpu when doing tasks such as adding reverb or other effects to the audio, and they had a synthesizer chip for converting MIDI into sounds. I don't know if any of the usb devices can duplicate those hardware features.

a condenser mic

If it is a typical studio condenser mic then it requires 48 volt phantom power that the laptop does not supply, so I assume that you are using it with a mic pre-amp or mixing board. If so, either of those would send out a line-level signal so it would be best if you got a sound card with a line-in jack, but if you lower the gain quite a bit you could probably get by with a sound card that just has a mic jack since the mic is only supplying a mono signal.

However if you don't have the pre-amp or mixing board yet then look at a bedroom studio audio interface rather than a consumer sound card. I am inserting a link to a Focusrite model just an example of what I mean, not meant as a recommendation:

http://www.amazon.com/Focusrite-2i2-USB-Recording-Interface/dp/B005OZE9SA/ref=pd_cp_MI_0

Another choice could be a little usb mixer like Behringer makes.

http://www.amazon.com/Behringer-302USB-BEHRINGER-XENYX/dp/B005EHILV4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1427027391&sr=8-2&keywords=preamp+audio+interface

I would check the specs on any usb device to see if it uses the usb port's power or if it has to be plugged into house current, and whether drivers are supplied. The Windows usb audio driver does not provide the best latency so if you need low latency but a low latency driver is not supplied by the manufacturer, then you might end up using the universal ASIO4ALL driver. That's okay as long as the device is known to work with it. However the Windows driver is perfectly fine for many recording situations.