Attn: Cheapskates

Seanmorse79

Seanmorse79

New member
I did it. Finally. I've been told that it wouldn't work, but it did.

3 identical PCI cheap-o consumer sound cards ($16 bucks each)
plus
Win98se
plus
2 hours of screaming, yelling, swearing and throwing things.
==equals===

6 in, 6 out for under 50 bucks!

Win98se recognizes all three cards, and so does Sonar and Sound Forge. When recording 6 tracks at once, everything lines up dead nuts.

Keep in mind, though. This is NO substitute for a quality system like a Delta or a C-Port, but the D/A converters are not too bad, and there's not too much noise to complain about.

So this is my solution UNTIL I can afford a C-Port or a Delta 1010. The Audiowerk 2 card I was using had been begging me to chuck it against the wall anyway.

If anybody's interested, I'll post the brand/model/where to get them (although I'm sure you can get them just about anywhere).
 
...nothin' ever gets by you, Bruce :)

..by pro standards, your absolutely right ...like I said, it's no subsitute for a quality package.

But it's worth mentioning for those who are financially challenged like myself. I wouldn't stand it up next to a quality setup, but you can still make some decent recordings with it. I have heard a bunch of people here say they're using Soundblasters.
 
You shoulda put that $50 into a jar and saved it. Lots of people here say they use soundblaster because EVERYBODY starts out with a soundblaster :) Let us know how your first project turns out though! You might also do some clock tests...it would to see how much drift there is between the three cards.

Slackmaster 2000
 
I ran a drum machine click through all 6 inputs for 3 minutes, and they didn't budge. I haven't tried anything longer yet (I just got it working), but I'll upload some work in progress ...hopefully next week.

Your probably right about the 50 bucks, but I had to try it :)
 
Bruce...you're killin me over here! ROTFL!!

I VERY HAPPY I ditched the ol'SB.....
 
lol... can't wait to hear you start complaining about .. "i got this ½ second delay in my recording" and.. "i can only get one vst working and then cubase/logic starts skipping.. help!"
 
Okay, now y'all need ta lighten up.

Baaahhaaa .... pretty funny stuff, there. Fact is, I've already tested it. You should probably read the thread you're posting to before you start jumping on the laugh wagon, tuff guy.

All 6 tracks record without a delay (look up "dead nuts" in your dictionary). All 6 tracks record at the same time without a delay, as well as any consumer level cards do.

Like I said before, I'm using this setup temporarily until I can afford a real card. I kept reading posts about using multiple cards and everybody said it probably wouldn't work. It does. Someone might have been interested to know that.

I'm leaving my computer now, and won't be back until tomorrow. I expect to see lots of slams and bashes by morning, so, at least
have a little fun with it, eh?

Sean
 
Naaaahhh..

Have fun with what you have! I used my SB for a long time! The quality improvement you will get once ya get a good 24bit card is... WOW!!
 
so is it Soundblaster?

I woulda spent my $50 on getting 1 turtle beach santa cruz and having a lot better card and having 4 gozintas instead of 6....

hey if you want a smoking compressor, tryout the 3630...it rocks.....


disclaimer:this post is a poor attempt at humor as i am one of the biggest cheapskates here:D
 
I'm not surprised that the three cards work, the way Windows (at least 98) works with multi-channel cards is to treat them as multiple stereo cards. So my 8 channel Gadget Labs shows up as 4 stereo cards.
I'm also not too surprised to hear that they can record a single track in time. But I gotta think that if you start playing that track back, and adding more tracks, that sooner or later it will start to drift.

As for the sound quality, if YOU are happy with it as a first step, hey thats fine. It will give you a setup to experiment & learn with until you are ready to $$$$ upgrade $$$$.
 
Recording, they probably are "dead nuts", 'specially if they are the same make of card, the clocks are gonna be really close --- for now....

The problem you are going to have is monitoring -- you'll play back a drum track on card #1 whilst recording on card #2 and notice things are "nuts, dead" (read: not n'sync) , and no amount of disk buffer manipulation will fix it -- that timing is on the PCI bus, well out of the reach of software...

Mo.
 
That's a good point, Mo. ...yet another reason to keep filling up the nickle jar for the ol' Delta/C-Port fund. However, (for right now, anyway) I'm doing the mixing internally through Sonar and routing everything through Card #1, which eliminates that problem. When I get a real card, I'll probably route the outs through the Mackie.

My main objective was to record a (my) whole band together (or track the drums), which I should be able to do. I'm going to try a test song on Monday and see how it turns out.
 
I believe its better to record cheaply than not at all. Any experience gained from going the hard way will make somethings easier down stream. Also its better to capture ideas and music while you have it than to have equipment up the ying yang with ideas long filed in the deepest recesses of the mind. Mind you Im working on PC with one of those on board sound chips right now, its slightly more advanced than my daughters abacus. I remember using a 1978 JVC cassette deck with 2 minijack microphones, so Im still moving in a positive direction. Go baby!

Peace,
Dennis
 
Agree...

I capture all my musical ideas on cassette on my alarm clock! Something pops in my head and I just hit record...state the day, chord progression etc and start playing or singing.

When I get something decent I add to it then start setting up all the equipment.

You don't NEED technology..it just makes it easier to get a good quality sound.

Keep it up man!
 
Sean, I'm very interested in how well this is going to work. If you get a chance at some point, could you do a little test?

Record a click track from all 3 stereo inputs simultaneously, letting it run for about two minutes. Then zoom WAY in on the files at 0:05, 0:30, 1:00, 1:30, and 1:55 to measure the amount of lag between clicks.

Now you're not necessarily looking for *seconds* of drift. Many times the problem with using multiple soundcards is phase... shit is off by just a few milliseconds. If the clicks line up within 1 or 2ms, then that's pretty darn good. If the drift starts to get up in the 10ms range or over, well, that could be a problem.

P.S. it'll help if the clicks are fairly slow...like 3 or 4 seconds apart. If there is a lot of drift over time, it might become hard to tell which clicks line up where.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Way to go!I had two Ensoniq audio pci cards synced before I got my C-Port.I'm curious how you got w98se to recognise them as separate cards.Did you rename one of the drivers?Supposedly w2kpro doesn't have that particular glitch about being touchy with multiple cards of the same mfg.Good luck with your setup.
Tom
 
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