Subject:Sound Card Advise

Posted by: deeplfo

Date:11/8/2002 4:28:54 PM

Hi,
I'm sure this has been mentioned more than once, but I think I'm at a point needing to ditch my Soundblaster Live Platinum card. So, what are the recommendations for cards under $500 that deliver the required performance and spec.

Thanks,
Mohsen

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: bgc

Date:11/8/2002 4:32:47 PM

Try the Echo Mia. It has nice specifications, great drivers (stable) and is $199.

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: groovewerx

Date:11/8/2002 5:23:49 PM

i'd wait a bit because there should be new models coming soon from all makers and their current models will sell for dirt.

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: TeeCee

Date:11/8/2002 5:27:51 PM

Why do you expect new models?

TeeCee

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: DjXSoundz

Date:11/8/2002 7:27:50 PM

Dont buy the Audiophile 2496, buy the ECHO MIA. The reason is cuz it got balanced TRS ins and not RCA's or TS. Dont let them fool u though - it says 4in - 4 out. they really mean 1 analog stereo pair in/out and a pair of digital SPDIF in/out. anyways, acids not a multitracker. Card sounds great, never any problems.

DJ XSOUNDZ

btw i've seen it for $180, i got mine for $150 on sale

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: astral_supreme

Date:11/9/2002 1:02:19 AM

I got a wave terminal 192m and cant even use it cause it has 8 speaker outs and I dont have 8 amps to run to 8 speakers....big money setup required for a card that cost me 199.

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: groovewerx

Date:11/9/2002 7:07:24 AM

new/improved cards are long overdue. cards optimised for p4/xp and winxp, 64bit support and so on.

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: drbam

Date:11/9/2002 7:37:40 AM

If you need more than 2 out, the Echo Gina is within your budget ( analog 2 in-8 out & SPIDIF). A great product.

drbam

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: gjn

Date:11/9/2002 10:57:04 AM

creamware luna..it's very good

www.creamware.de

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:11/9/2002 4:41:52 PM

Remember the Mia doesn't have MIDI I/O either. The Audiophile 2496 does.

Although the jacks on the Audiophile are unbalanced, that doesn't mean you'll come across interference. And it doesn't matter if you go with the Mia or the Audiophile as far as S/PDIF goes if that's what you want, because they're both unbalanced to begin with. It just all depends on what you want in a card.

Iacobus

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: pwppch

Date:11/9/2002 7:35:53 PM

64 bit support in a sound card? What do you mean by this???

Peter

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: groovewerx

Date:11/10/2002 10:14:07 PM

64 bit pci

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: Spirit

Date:11/11/2002 1:04:26 AM

Another vote for the Creamware Luna - a great card with a lot of useful extras such as synths and effects. With the new(ish) SFP software it's an extremely stable platform.

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: TeeCee

Date:11/11/2002 9:38:48 AM

Right, the Audiophile has MIDI which is more important to most stereo cardusers than balanced I/O. What are you connecting your balanced I/O to?

As for optimised for WinXP, that's a driver issue. The Delta series has been running for several years with better WinXp support than Win98 support. The Sudiophile I believe is their newest card, which i would not expect to be their first to update.

TeeCee

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: MyST

Date:11/11/2002 10:11:55 AM

Do we still need midi input now that you can get controllers via USB?
I'm asking because I have the Mia and I'll be wanting to hook-up my keyboard shortly.
Since I was using my Turle Beach Montego for that purpose before, I didn't need it. But now that I've migrated to XP, that card isn't supported anymore. So, I was thinking of an adapter (midi port to USB) or even the Oxygen 8.
Is there shortcomings to using USB?

M

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: salad

Date:11/11/2002 10:39:46 AM

A cool little device that I've had much success with is the Midiman USB MIDIsport. I've got the 2x2.
USB is great for MIDI!

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: pwppch

Date:11/11/2002 5:06:05 PM

Well, that isn't really up to us since this is a hardware thing. We talk to the hardware. We don't care how it is implemented in hardware.

What mobos have 64 bit PCI slots? What audio cards are 64 bit?

Even then, what benifit does it offer? There are no such things as 64 bit A/D converters. There are no practical 32 bit converters let alone affordable solutions.

Peter

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: wcreed

Date:11/11/2002 7:17:41 PM

Most Xeon motherboards have 64 bit PCI slots.

At this point, 64 bit SCSI controlers are the only thing to plug into them.

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: groovewerx

Date:11/11/2002 11:48:09 PM

The content of this message was deleted by the owner.

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: pwppch

Date:11/12/2002 9:44:04 AM

You are preaching to the choir. While everybody else was targeting Win9X, we were developing with NT and the future OS in mind. Hell, we even supported the Alpha and PowerPC architectures. I was writing NT audio drivers when Microsoft's position on full duplex audio under NT was to use two sound cards.

I would love for everybody to scrap Win9X and move on. It has been a dinosaur since the day it was released, yet it is still the most widely used consumer OS on the planet. We support it because we have to, not because we want to. If we dropped support for Win9X, there would be a significant portion of our user base that would be left out of our products.

I can assure you that we are very aware of 64 bit here at SF. (It haunts my days sometimes.) 64 bit processing is the future, no doubt. This is an architectural thing, not an audio thing. When the technology exists to the user you can be assured that SOFO will support and exploit all aspects of it.

Peter
PS: Please, spare me the doom and gloom comments.

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: groovewerx

Date:11/12/2002 11:31:10 AM

i took your response as a dismissal.

all is well

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:11/12/2002 12:52:30 PM

There are no issues that I know of when using MIDI via USB, other than driver stability/support. Using such an interface should work just fine, so go ahead and use it.

I was just thinking along the lines of integration. If you wanted to do it separately, that's a good idea too based on the options available.

TeeCee: The Studiophile is a series of monitors, not soundcards.

HTH,
Iacobus

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: jcarney42

Date:11/12/2002 7:08:13 PM

My vote goes for the Waveterminal 192M. 4analog in, 8 unbalanced analog out, optical,sp/dif out. in/out uses 1/4 inch trs plugs. Has 2 balanced mic ins with phantom power and pre-amp chips for all inputs on the card. 2 powered stereo outputs for headphones or studio monitors for realtime monitoring of recording and playback. (seperate from the 8 analog out).
Inputs are either 4 unbalanced in or 2 balanced (mic), 2 un.
Very stable drivers for mme, wme, ASIO2, gigasoft, directshow. Has nice control program located in the track bar.
Here is some cool stuff.
It installs a seperate driver for each of the ten tracks of the card, plus usb midi, plus an overall 10channel driver for surround mixing.
This means if the software supports it, one program can be using a few sets of the the available tracks, while another uses the rest. this goes for DVD and music playback as well.
Midi is through external control or via software synth managers like the one from Edirol. It also works with the DLS softsynth that comes with Acid.
Very low latency.
Can not load midi files the way Audigy does.
The analog in/outs are on a breakout box.
They have a software based routing system called directwire. Similar to rewire, but doesn't require software to be re-written to use it. In theory, you could use PowerDVD to route DVD audio into Vegas Video for recording.

cost at places like audiomidi.com and draudio.com is right at $200.00.
More info at
www.esi-pro.com
Great card for a great price.
downside, no xlr inputs/outputs. but adatptors can work. I have one for my SURE SM58 mic.

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: deeplfo

Date:11/13/2002 12:34:39 AM

I second that. I've got the 4x4 USB and it works like a charm.

Mohsen

p.s. thanks for all the recommendations. The M-audio and CreamWare sounds really nice.

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: deeplfo

Date:11/13/2002 12:09:45 PM

Are the 8 outs, 8 mono signals, or are they stereo, i.e. 8 stereo outs?

thx

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: deeplfo

Date:11/13/2002 12:38:51 PM

Never mind, figuired it out.

thx

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: TeeCee

Date:11/13/2002 4:33:59 PM

You can get MIDI in any way you want. For me on my soft synth PC, it did not make sense to buy a card with a balanced stereo pair and no MIDI PLUS a USB MIDI interface when I could by a card with an unbalanced stereo pair plus a digital pair and MIDI I/O for less money than just the card. Especially when USB is often said to not be good for audio PCs as it can be too CPU intetensive. I can't verify that, but I avoid it.

TeeCee

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: RickBales

Date:12/26/2002 9:44:15 PM

I know this may be a dumb question, but what is lacking with the creative Live Platinum card. That is what I am currently using. I haven't had any other cards to compare it to.

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: vonhosen

Date:12/27/2002 11:18:07 AM

It's limited to 48kHz recording.

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: billybk

Date:12/27/2002 11:39:53 AM

The low latency driver implementation(less than 10msec) is non-existent, or at least
inadequate for live input monitoring and/or triggering softsynths from a MIDI controller in real-time. My Delta 66 gets 1.5msec(WDM mode/64samples)in SONAR 2.1 and 5msec(ASIO mode/256samples) in ACID 4.0b, with no crackling or dropouts in the audio.

Next.....


Billy Buck

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: dkistner

Date:12/27/2002 11:42:36 AM

Also, if you set your software to any sampling rate other than 48kHz, the computer must work harder to convert the Soundblaster's rate to the rate you're using. There's a ton of discussion in this forum about why the Soundblaster cards are not so desirable for audio work. Just search for Soundblaster, and you'll be amazed.

My partner has an Audigy on his computer, and it sounds lovely. I've got two cards in mine: a Soundblaster Live and an Echo Mia. I use the Mia for making the music, then listen to what it sounds like on the Live because I know there are huge numbers of people that have Soundblaster cards installed.

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: Outlaw

Date:12/27/2002 7:11:56 PM

you know i got an STAudio DSP2000 on another machine just for VST'Is and i got it for abour $430 had a couple of drivers issues which got ironed out...8 ins 8 outs MIDI ports SPDIF coax/optical 2 mic pres and headphone out with volume not bad for price sounds real good too........ dunno just a suggestion

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: RasKeita

Date:12/27/2002 8:00:57 PM

I've got a Delta 66 and an Audiophile 2496, plus an Audigy. I regularly switch up between the three depending on exactly what I'm doing and what I'm working with. never a problem with any one of them...Level Vibes

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: groovewerx

Date:12/28/2002 12:30:28 AM

i'd trade the ap2496 and audigy for a mackie 1202

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: RasKeita

Date:12/28/2002 1:22:37 AM

Already got one and a Roland VM3100...Not braggin' or nothing just been building for a few years...Level Vibes

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: Laurence

Date:12/28/2002 9:32:21 AM

I wouldn't trade my Edirol UA-700 for anything. The drivers are terrific, and having everything I need to get good vocal and guitar sounds in one box is really convenient. I just can't say enough about this box! I think it blows everything else away. Unless you're doing surround sound, or recording multiple tracks at once, it is a great way to go.

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: gjn

Date:12/29/2002 8:05:22 AM

creamware is good audio card whith sofo.
www.creamware.com

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: papawillow

Date:12/30/2002 7:52:25 AM

Have a look at www.digit-life.com and click on the sound section for some interesting reading.

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: deeplfo

Date:12/30/2002 1:30:18 PM

What's the verdict on the M-Audio's Delta 44?

Subject:RE: Sound Card Advise

Reply by: papawillow

Date:12/31/2002 7:56:43 AM

From a SOS review for Marian Marc 4: (March 2001)
"The analogue converters are AKM AK4524s, as also used in Aardvark's Direct Pro 24/96, many of the Creamware range including the Powersampler, M Audio's Delta 44 and 66, and Terratec's EWS88MT"

So there you go ...I want to purchase a sound card as well and my research suggests a lot of the $150-$500 use similar high quality chips... (Cards with AKM chips seem to get good reviews) so its down to all the goodies attached.

Delta 44 would be as good as anything out there ...(forum users Antonio and billybk have big brother M-Audio Omni Delta 66 so you can ask them how it performs.)

Unless I have missed the latest offerings I will probably go for the M-Audio Omni Studio myself... just on what I have read.

After reading rave reviews and IF I had the dollars :) a Lynx 2.