Sound Cards

Hmm... for £150 you've got a few options, but these are the ones I've heard and rate.

M-Audio Delta 44 (4in/4out)
M-Audio Delta 410 (2in/8out)
Echo Mia (2in/2out)

Obviously I reckon others will chip in, but those are off the top of my head.

J.
 
Ross - get yourself one of the m-audio ones !!!! How much outboard stuff you got now >? Have you got a desk >?

:)

Just trying to work out if you are the Ross that I know .... It must be you ........ Hello !!!!!
 
hello again james, you're everywhere!

yes i have lots of outboard stuff, i have a mixing desk but its absolute SHIT and i hate it. its a behringer MX1604A.

are you coming to the new years party james?
 
</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Double_Helix @ Dec 30 2003, 01:21 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> im going for the delta 44, but just to make sure, i can run my midi through one sound card and my audio through another, cant i? [/quote:1c0197f395]
Should be no problem.

One of the most stable configurations I had was a Delta 44 for audio and a Soundblaster Live card doing the midi in/out. It worked fine, no conflicts. USB midi interface was a nightmare though.

Currently I have a couple of Delta 410's - they sound great, but I am having some niggles since I plugged a USB midi interface in once again. (Will I never learn?) I have quite an old Athlon board tho'.

The 410's are 4 in, 10 out, (including SPDIF for 2 of the in's and 2 of the out's). But they are RCA connectors (female).

Worth bearing in mind that, if you want more outputs in future you can't reliably sync a Delta 44 with another Delta due to lack of SPDIF, so you'll end up replacing the Delta 44 rather than adding to it.
 
Heh. My 2004 configuration should be two Echo Ginas for audio, plus my old SB Live for MIDI, plus a reasonable AthlonXP/nForce/1GB combo.

*salivates at the thought of that rig compared to my (t)rusty old Athlon 700/K7V/384MB*

J.
 
i'm soon buying a delta 66 can't fault those lovely breakout boxes and the whole delta series is very well reputed too. alternatively you could go for the echo mia midi, basically the echo mia with a midi in out breakout, prob. the best sounding budget card :)
 
ok waht about the soundblaster audigy 2? i'm getting a new pc in a few days with one of these fitted - seriously if i wanted to do some music editing should i ask them to take it out and look at putting something else in there?
 
Hrm - Audigy 2 is a step in the right direction, but the general rule of thumb would be to avoid Creative sound cards like the plague.

Strictly speaking if all you want to do is edit some existing tracks, then it shouldn't be too bad - but for audio generation, Creative cards are pants.

They work in hardware *always* at 48000Hz - any other frequency and you'll get noticeable artifacts in the sound, whether recording in or playing back. The drivers are a waste of space - Goz'll be able to give you the lowdown on this though.

It really depends what you're mainly using your machine for - for gaming, DVD playback or whatever, Audigy is OK (if overpriced). But for serious audio work, they're just more hassle than they're worth.

J. (Who's been making tunes with an SB Live Platinum, for his sins...)
 
The drivers are a waste of space - Goz'll be able to give you the lowdown on this though

Creative Labs are famed throughout the world for not actually supporting their hardware. The drivers have so many bugs in them its almost a profession in itself knowing how to get the best out of the card without it burning down, falling over, etc. Most people (or coders, if you can call us people ;)) just turn off all the features as the easiest way to avoid the issues ...
 
thanks! ....right, creative don't sound too good then!

i'm kind of hoping to do some audio production on the machine, but i'm a total beginner - i tried to run reason on my old pc (amd166) and was kindly informed that "your pc is too slow"....not really into computer games but will be running a dvd drive....mainly wanting to get some sort of audio and just general pc going

....hmmm..but i'm not sure i can afford £150 for a soundcard....is there anything decent for less than that? like <£100??
 
Creative cards are OK if all you wanna do is piss about with Reason. I could even get acceptable latency with the Soundblaster Live card which didn't even have ASIO drivers.

But you could do worse than scour eBay for used cards, such as SW1000XG, or M-audio Audiophile 24/96. Hell, you can even get a brand new Audiophile from Digital Village for 116 quid, so used ones on eBay must be going for less than a ton soon.

The old 20-bit Gina's crop up now and then too... 2 ins and 8 outs (plus SPDIF in/out) for about 80 quid... and they sound good... I've heard 'em plenty of times... I think most of us have even if we don't know it. :P

Enough?
 
Right, just the same situation as everybody else but, i need a sound card to incorporate midi and audio.

I only need two ins and mabye four outs. But most of the good audio cards don't seem to have midi. M-audio, Echo etc etc

Im at uni so im used to digi 001 and better so i don't want to compromise on quality.

But, as i allready have a mackie 14 track mixer i was thinking about getting a card without a breakout box and using the mixer instead!

Im running round in circles at the mo and any advise would be greatfully appreciated!

P.s i do have money restrictions (i did say i was a student)
 
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