There’s a certain company — don’t want to name names, but it makes very popular products and rhymes with “Migidesign” — that sells decent audio converters and DSP systems at very expensive prices. They lock you into a single software solution, and when you want to go mobile, you have to give up all the pro-level audio equipment or lug studio-size gear with you.

Native alternatives have always let you choose your audio system, and that’s a good thing. This year, Apple worked with Apogee to allow users of Logic and other native platforms to use what most people feel are superior converters. And whereas running native on the CPU used to cause some serious problems compared to dedicated DSP hardware, modern Intel chips give you more capabilities than you could ever use. So far, so good. But the problem of mobility remained: the need for PCI Express slots means you have to lug around a tower.

Enter the ExpressCard slot on the MacBook Pro. By providing PCIe-style bandwidth, it’s now possible to use the same audio hardware on the road with a laptop as in a studio with a desktop. I got to talk with the top product experts from both Apogee and Apple about the new solution: Symphony Mobile. They’re very excited about it, of course, but I don’t think they’ll be alone: