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Grand Master

john

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hey

What soundcards do you use in your music PC(s)?

In my Carillon I use two Creamware cards: Pulsar 2 and Powersampler. Nice cards and I love the management application. In my laptop I use a pcmcia EMU 1616M. It's pretty good, but the manual could be clearer and it is pretty picky about set up.

What do you have, and what do you think of it?

Cheers

John

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Nightwolf

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I have the Digi 001 and whatever hardware came with it. Works great for me, I do get a little bit of frustrating "lag" but I'm sure it is something I have set up wrong and has nothing to do with the Digi H/W

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Grand Master

john

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Do they offer any utils to help tune your system?

Anyone else?

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Steve

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At the moment I'm using a Soundblaster Audigy. I also have a Yamaha sw1000xg, but for some unknown reason, when I upgraded my mobo, it wouldn't work? Very annoying.I've been looking at som M-Audio cards. They seem to be the canines testes at the moment! :)

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  • 2 months later...
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thelevellers

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M-audio are pretty awesome, I bought one when I thought I could be arsed with recording through it, but as I can;t afford any other recording gubbins, it kinda failed apart from one or two random failed attempts... Might be selling mine if you're interested?! Especially as it doesn't do the whole MIDI thing, which is actually what I need more than recording functionality at the moment...

Any tips on a decent soundcard for MIDI?

Rohan :)

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Steve

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M-audio are pretty awesome, I bought one when I thought I could be arsed with recording through it, but as I can;t afford any other recording gubbins, it kinda failed apart from one or two random failed attempts... Might be selling mine if you're interested?! Especially as it doesn't do the whole MIDI thing, which is actually what I need more than recording functionality at the moment...

Any tips on a decent soundcard for MIDI?

Rohan :)

I might be interested in that! What do you want for it? Do you smoke?

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thelevellers

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erm, not legally?! [smiley=hippy.gif];)

Well, I figure some money is better than none, but I'll jump in at the £70 mark... Or trading of useful equipment!

It's a Delta 66 with 4-in 4-out I/O breakout box, not the uber version with controls, so really you need a mixer to stick in front or everything clips like a bastard! But it's decent quality from what I've experienced and it come's with Pro sessions sound library and Live lite 4... Whatever they are! i never got around to experimenting... :S If you google it you should find more useful info...

As far as the sound card I want, as I'm a student it has to be fairly budget, but at the same time I want my midi guitars to sound like, well guitars, rather than failed attempts at em! I'll take a look at Audigy :)

Cheers, Rohan

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  • 3 months later...
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sparkotronic

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On my desktop I use a Terratec DMX 6fire, It's a superb card with lots of I/O and almost 0ms latency.

On my lappy it's a M-Audio Firewire, No MIDI, but I use a E-mu usb to MIDI converter for that. as for the card, it sounds way better than the Terratec, I just wish that I had more time and opportunity to use it.

Colin

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  • 1 month later...
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Afiqme

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i use soundblaster live only.. cheapo sound card ... but still i managed to get the sound dat i want ... u can listen to my song, it was recorded with sb live ...

Stream: http://www.vicerock.net/jamm/play.php?mode...&song_id=27

Download: http://www.vicerock.net/jamm/download.php?...&song_id=27

but im still thinking to get an ESP1010 audio interface lol.. hehe ;)

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Steve

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I think the Soundblaster live had a great midi drum set! I've just listened to your track Afiqme, and it sounds great! :) As a budget card, it was pretty good!

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ramadhaniyanto

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i use soundblaster live only.. cheapo sound card ...

not only cheapo soundcard ... ONLY soundcard available on the market here where i'm from, and even that isn't available at all vendors ??? there are the mid- to high-end soundcards, but i'd have to order them online, and online shopping isn't reliable or secure here.

me? i use my very trusty and very reliable ONBOARD SOUNDCARD! [smiley=rockin.gif] yeah, baby! with no ASIO driver! ha ha!

... that's why i'm putting the cheapo soundblaster live on my no. 2 wishlist (no. 1 is ... a mic stand ... i know ... VERY frugal :-[)

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KennyChaffin

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I've had issues with the Creative/E-MU stuff. I've also heard that the Soundblaster cards have latency issues.

About 10 years ago when I first tried getting into this music/songwriting thing I blew a big wad on an internal/external Audigy sound card for my desktop PC and it did did work fine, gave me several I/O channels etc. When I upgraded my computer a few years later is would not work and I could never resolve the issue so finally gave up after several attempts - at that point I wasn't doing anything with computer music in any case and just used the on-the-motherboard sound.

Last year when I decided to make a serious go at this music thing again, I upgraded all my software (Sonar primarily) and started with using that on-board sound card. I bought a USB M-Audio midi i/o to connect to my Yamaha keyboard and Roland Boss synth module that requires a line-in input. At first it didn't work and I had to reinstall drivers and get Asio4all and all was good - except latency was horrible!

I looked around a lot on line and researched what was best and most economical. I also looked seriously at internal PC (PCI) cards vs external USB or Firewire. I wanted an external (for future portability and portability between machines) but was skeptical that an external USB card would have better latency than a PCI card and I've never even plugged anything into my Firewire interface. The research indicated that the Firewire was faster even than USB which my computer supported as well.

It seemed the M-Audio PCI Audiophile cards were very good for PCI cards and were very economical, but as I said I wanted an external audio interface if possible so I decided ordered the E-MU(creative) 404 USB-2 interface from SameDayMusic which turned out to be a disaster. I installed it as indicated (disabling the internal sound card) and everything looked good. My windows sounds were working and WinAmp was playing XM until I brought Sonar up and the Winamp player shut off despite the option in Sonar being set to "Share" audio drivers. Well, when I shut down Sonar I expected my Winamp sound to start back up, but it didn't, nor did I have any windows sounds. The only way I could get them back was to re-boot the PC! Driver issues I thought so downloaded the most recent drivers from E-MU etc. and retried --- same thing. F-This I said and immediately called for a return authorization which they granted after a day or so.

I re-reviewed all my options and made a lunchtime run to Guitar Center where the sales-kid convinced me that what I needed was an M-Audio Firewire external interface - M-Audio FireWire 1814 Computer Recording Interface. Well, trusting the salesman I bought it and headed back to work. Upon getting home I pull the box out and notice that it's not shrink wrapped, hmmm-maybe someone wanted to look at it. I open the box to find the bare audio interface (no plastic bag around it), no manual, no software, no interface cable. Needless to say I was PISSED! Drove back to Guitar Center and got my money back vowing to never buy anything there again!

A few days later after cooling down I visited a different guitar center (after additional research) kinda focusing on the PreSonus Firebox. I ran into another customer who was a pro audio engineer and he was pushing the E-Mu products, I told him of my issues and he just kind of shook his head and said he'd never had any issues with them. Despite that I refused to buy E-Mu at this point and even though the Firebox was a couple of hundred $$ more I took it home and it is working great -- as expected in that my Windows/Winamp/Sonar/Audacity/etc all work happily together and the latency is reasonable.

Long Story, but I thought the details were important and may help others in a similar situation.

KAC

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KennyChaffin

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..... I built my computer so I could save on that end (and ended up upgrading everything about six months ago to a dual-core system with 3GB ram). In another two years, I'll upgrade to quad-core but I'm barely pushing what I do have past 50% CPU usage so I'm good so far.

what processor/motherboard? I'm about to embark on the "upgrade the computer" adventure.

KAC

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FinnArild

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I am happy with my M-Audio 410, an excellent unit. I record at 44.1 - since there is no (real) point in using a higher samplingrate. I record in 24 bit for the nice, extra headroom, though.

Edited by FinnArild
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thelevellers

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Just wanted to make a quick note to agree with Steve here - don't bother with buying ready made comps!

A fine example would be my friend who just sorted himself out with a £500 PC which is equivalent to a roughly £1000 Dell or similar! As long as you can wield a screw driver then it's easy, just don't go rubbing the carpet before hand :P And if you have any problems, google is usually your bestest friend in the whole world :) (or here on occasions! :o )

:)

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KennyChaffin

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Just wanted to make a quick note to agree with Steve here - don't bother with buying ready made comps!

A fine example would be my friend who just sorted himself out with a £500 PC which is equivalent to a roughly £1000 Dell or similar! As long as you can wield a screw driver then it's easy, just don't go rubbing the carpet before hand :P And if you have any problems, google is usually your bestest friend in the whole world :) (or here on occasions! :o )

:)

Wow, you have google there!

:D

KAC

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