advice needed on new soundcard

B

bob_the_fat_mon

New member
Hi,
Hope someone can spare a bit of advice for a novice. I need a new soundcard, cos the onboard sound on my pc is just what I get through the motherboard (Asrock K7S41GX) and it's crap.

I have two main aims:

1. I want to record home demos. These will largely be one man guitar based affairs. This means that I only really need to record one instrument at a time, and that I'm not looking for professional quality. I will (at first) be using a four track as a basic mixer, and have Cakewalk Guitar Tracks 2, which seems to have all the features I need.

2. I use my PC as a jukebox, rigged up to my hifi. Comparison of my CD player against the sound out of the PC reveals it to be pretty poor, so I want to improve that too.

I have a very limited budget (approx £50, or $100), but, like I said, I'm not looking for top spec, just better. I'm tempted by a Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS which is on PCworld.co.uk cheap, but I've heard they're not too good for recording.

Any ideas!? Thanks very much, it's appreciated.
Neil
 
a lot of people on here use that sound card.
if you want some free tutorials on home recording check out the
support (section half way down) at pgmusic.com.
if you dont have a mixer....a lot of folks like the yamaha mg.
if you have q's after reading the free tutorials just ask. peace.
also would help to post your computr confign.
 
That'll do just fine, but he'll need a way to route those signals to the soundcard inputs, like a mixer with enough individual sends.
 
I would like to comment your original question about $100 card. First you must decide whether to buy internal PCI or external Firewire or USB card. Looking at your budget it must be PCI but you should know that within a several years PCI will not be probably used in PCs. Right now you can buy a new PC with PCI slots but I suppose that within 2 years people will have a problem to get motherboard with such slots. If you plan to use this card for more than 2 years think about firewire or usb. Of course there is a problem with price - usb versions are more expensive than PCI versions and firewire versions are more expensive than usb versions.
So this was just warning in the beginning.
If you really want to go to PCI, I would recommend Esi Juli@ because this card has the best AD/DA from these cheap cards. Its big advantage is also built in MIDI port so you do not have to buy an additional daughter board if you need MIDI. Audiophile is very good card, but it is quite old and a new cards are better as for the quality of the sound. E-mu 0404 is also a good choice, I would recommend it like second one. Do not take Audiotrak Maya since its playback quality is not sufficient. It also does not have MIDI port.
The only competitive product for Juli@ is E-mu 1212M but this one is more expensive.

Look at this web http://www.digit-life.com for a deep reviews of these cards.

Do not take anything from Creative since these cards are designed for games where are almost unbeatable and for playback of music but not for music making. Creative just issues SB Audigy 4 that looks good but anything else from Creative is not worthy of your bucks.
 
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