What soundcard?

[john]

Hi

What soundcard do you use? Pros/cons?

I use 2, a Creamware Powers Sampler and a Creamware Pulsar 2. The cards are great, really flexible and high quality. Take all the load off your main processor.

Con:

The DSPs create a lot off heat, so you need some major cooling from some decent silent fans.

Cheers

John

[Steve]

I bought an M-Audio delta 66. Cost me an arm and a leg! I had heard great things of this company and it's products. Got everything installed, very nice thank you! Recorded one track of audio... Superb!! Recorded the next track... Sounded like a pan of bacon frying... I was devastated. I tried everything I knew. Got it with it's own irq setting, removed my other soundcard, took out the modem and disabled everything I could, Reformatted and installed on a clean partition. Nothing worked! Weeks had gone by and I couldnt use it. Contacted M-Audio, they suggested everything I had already tried. Another week or so goes by. When I tried to return it! They said I had had it too long! Bastards.... Then they admited that there were some known problems with my particular chipset VIA kt 133a-686b. But they still refused to take it back! I eventually did a straight swap for a Yamaha SW1000xg card. I think this card is great! I know it's a bit long in the tooth now but it suits me down to the ground!

Despite all the trouble I had with M-Audio, I still think they produce some very good kit, and if I ever do a rebuild, I would seriously consider their kit.

[Rudi]

Despite all the trouble I had with M-Audio, I still think they produce some very good kit, and if I ever do a rebuild, I would seriously consider their kit.

Theres a sucker born every minute !  :'(

[john]

Anyone else?

[Steve]

Theres a sucker born every minute !

Could you send her round to my place then?

[Stefanos]

I have a staudio dsp24 mkII. Have no troubles with it and works like a charm. And stuadio have reall nice racks for upgrading the card. Only i have no money for the rack saddly enough.......

[john]

Hey Stefano

Welcome to Songstuff!

Sadly your predicament sounds very familiar :

Cheers

John

[Guest olggu]

Hi

What soundcard do you use? Pros/cons?

I use 2, a Creamware Powers Sampler and a Creamware Pulsar 2. The cards are great, really flexible and high quality. Take all the load off your main processor.

Con:

The DSPs create a lot off heat, so you need some major cooling from some decent silent fans.

Cheers

John

Hi guy's!

I have reading this thread, and I have one question which you guy's can answer. You see, as you know, I'm not musician, and sound card's ain't just my field of business, so if you would add some information about that  how those special cards improve you system compared to ordinary card's like SB Live etc. that would be nice...What I'm after is that there's plenty of guy's who don't really know what difference it makes. I don't need one, my needs are filled with that old SB, but I know that is a question which puzzle mind's of some newbies...

[Steve]

I think the the old addage "You get what you pay for " answers this question. The SB live is a good all round card that suits most peoples needs, but if you were to get into some quality recording, you would certainly need better equipment all round. It would be pointless sticking an expensive card into a bog standard, off the shelf PC. It would be too noisy for a start.!

[Nightwolf]

The soundcards discussed here are soley for the purpose of recording. If you do not want to record your own Music with your PC IE; not a Musician, then you don't need one.

Peace,

John

[Guest olggu]

I think the the old addage "You get what you pay for " answers this question. The SB live is a good all round card that suits most peoples needs, but if you were to get into some quality recording, you would certainly need better equipment all round. It would be pointless sticking an expensive card into a bog standard, off the shelf PC. It would be too noisy for a start.!

What I meant to ask, is what I should be looking for, if I need soundcard better for making music etc. than SB-products...There is quite many so called PRO-cards, so which is al around master?

[davlan]

My take on sound cards is that it largely comes down to latency. That is the length of time it takes audio to come out the speaker from the point that it is activated from your software. Think about it. If you are trying to monitor an input into the computer, say from a guitar you are playing in real time, and there is a delay of 20ms then it won't sound right. If you have a sound card with a latency of 4 ms then you will be able to use the computer as a virtual mixing desk and recorder (or as a real time super synth). It allows a lot more flexibility. Look for ASIO (or equivalent) drivers.

Most sound cards are 24 bit which means that sound quality is nearly always good.

A sound card with lots of ins and outs will allow you to patch all your outboard gear in but given the amount of high quality plugins you get with your software these rack units and multiple in/outs might not be necessary.

For maximum flexibility look at a Firewire or USB2 device. Plug and play!

Dave

[Guest olggu]

I transferred ALL my old vinyls to CD's with that card and was pretty happy with the result... they sound like originals... which was the main thing. I'm not a HiFi-freak, so there may have been some loss with the top end, but who cares.... I got those old records saved, in a form I can listen to for the NEXT 10-15 years...

H.

Or you think you listen...well, they really can make it, but only if you have used some top quality CD-R:s for copying them. I have write my own cd:s something like 5 years now, and some of them aren't working anymore, because I have used some cheap-ass CD-R blanks for writing...So don't buy those cheap almost see-through-clear bulk CD-R:S for saving anything valuable