Sound card for music production

[Leon]

Originally Posted by King of Snake

you don't have you own computer?!

That will be the most important thing then (ah i remember the day when i first got my own computer. Pentium 266 Mhz, something like that )

Heh, well the only computer we have is this one, that's on the attic. But everyone in this house uses it. My next objective is to get one for my own, to have it in my own room too.

[King of Snake]

believe me, it will mark a new era in your life

[Leon]

Originally Posted by King of Snake

believe me, it will mark a new era in your life

You mean you have a lot of porn on your pc?

[luminary]

In our main studio and as part of our live rig we use a RME Fireface 800. Solid, stable, never had any issues.

Home studio and for travelling and DJing I use a M-Audio Firewire Audiophile. A good piece of gear. A few glitches and stabilty problems on occasion, but on the whole it is a great audio interface.

[esaias]

RME's are rock solid cards. Have had HDSP9652 for couple years now and 0 (ZERO!) problems. I've had Motu2408mkII, DIGI001, Korg 1212 and some cheap stuff and RME is just plain solid. I have lots of adat gear and I have never had a noisy loss of sync etc.
I can use 64 samples/buffer with 1.8ghz p4 :P (although very risky while recording but it works)

RME highly recommended.
EMU has good stuff.
M-Audio M-BOX has been praised too.
(Stay away from X-Fi etc. consumer products, go for more pro gear, it is worth it)

-Tomi

[King of Snake]

Originally Posted by Leon

You mean you have a lot of porn on your pc?

what did you think i bought it for in the first place?!

[gormster]

My sound card cost fifty dollars. It was the cheapest one I could get with onboard MIDI. I have absolutely zero problem with it other than Cubase doesn't recognise it as surround, which is not really a huge deal.

I know you can reduce your CPU load and etc. by getting a more expensive sound card, but just get a better CPU. Or a mac, if you're going to be exclusively using it for music-making. I've never used one for that purpose but I hear that they are good at it.

I've got a P4 2.2GHz, and 768MB RAM. My PC only struggles in the densest part of a Reason song that has got to have more than a hundred devices. Possible much more, I haven't counted them all and a lot of them are in Combinators. If you've got a good amount of RAM (1.5-2GB) and a decent processor (c. 3GHz) then you don't need to worry about a fancy sound card, and both the RAM and processor can be used for things other than music.

Short n Sweet: Don't bother.

[Renze]

I can recommend E-MU. Using the 1616 Cardbus interface myself (for laptop). They also have nice PCI cards for desktop PCs, check out the 1212m <- the 'm' means really good AD/DA converters, found in Digidesign ProTools HD systems!

Edit: the 1212m costs € 199 @ Feedback

[Biopharmer]

The BEST music creation software by far, is FL Studio 6
(Fruity Loops)
And i own nuendo and cubase, and i think this is way better, i also own the native instruments FM7, DX7 emulator, and if you use it as a vst plugin in conjunction with FL, you can make some sweet music.
The minimoog v is also good.

[splattered123]

I'm just getting into this myself, i have a P4 3.2, D865 Intel Mobo, 1gb 400mhz ram, two 80 Sata II HDDs, and a Radeon 9000 series (not sure which one off the top of my head)

I don't need a ton if in/outs at the moment so i went with the E-MU 0404 sound card, you can get them for $75-$99 and they're supposed to be great cards as long as you have a decent PC to run em.

The Audiophile 2496 is pretty much the same thing as the 0404, except it has lil' RCA outs as opposed to the 1/4 TS outs of the 0404 and maybe better drivers depending on your system.

Both have unbalanced outs, so be careful if radio interference is a problem where you live. If it is, you might just want to save up longer and invest in a card/audio interface with balanced outs. I think the E-MU 1212 has balanced i/o

You should invest in a pair of monitors(speakers) too... i got the KRK Rokit RP5 monitors... $135 a piece with full warranty.

Are you going to be using soft synth stuff mostly? I plan on using Reason/Cubase/FL6, and a bunch of Native Instrument VSTs. You can just use your computer keyboard but most people prefer a midi controller and i already have my eye on one... haven't bought it yet though.

If you are going to be recording live instruments at all, you will need to invest in an external mixer with decent mic preamps...

Ok so i'm just in the purchase/research/experimentation phase and all of what i've said thus far might be bogus, but this is a good site to go check out...

http://www.tweakheadz.com/guide.htm