getting started - audio interface questions

R

rhythm

New member
Hi folks...

Before making any purchases, I wanted to ask some very basic PC setup/usage questions. I'll have pleny of others later, but wanted to get a couple of basic things clarified for me...

I'm just trying to picture everyday use of my PC once I've got a recording interface connected, and I get the feeling that I'd prefer to use the recording setup (monitor speakers, mixer, etc) only when performing recording operations, and use just my regular PC speakers (and leave everything else alone) when performing regular day-to-day use of the PC, if at all possible.

My PC has its audio circuitry integrated onto the motherboard. If I install a PCI recording soundcard/interface, would that necessarily disable the integrated sound that I have now, or could I continue to use the integrated sound for 'day-to-day' use of the PC (playing MP3s and CDs, audio and video clips, etc), and use the PCI interface for anything involving whatever recording software I'm using?

If installing a PCI card would completely disable the onboard sound, then I suppose another option would be a firewire interface? With this kind of interface would I be able to configure the recording software to communicate with the firewire input/output, and still use the onboard sound as I do now?

I also am thinking that my PC's CD player may be useless if I disable the integrated audio that I am currently using - true?

Anyway, I hope my post even made sense....I know I was probably rambling a bit. Perhaps after hearing feedback I'll come to the conclusion that I'll eventually want two PCs to do what I want, but perhaps not. Any help would be most appreciated, so I could at least get these basic setup questions put to rest.

Thanks,
Greg
 
You can go ahead & do it all with one box because disabling things is only done as you choose. A lot of us disable a bunch of stuff in the pci bus during recording/playback/mixdown like ethernet, other sound cards or onboard sound, any hard drives on other channels, cd/dvd drives, etc. It's all done from the various areas in software; however, I have USB 100% absolutely turned off to every extent of the imagination (in BIOS) because I hate it being enabled on a daw.
 
another area to watch is to not allow the tsr portions of software run... like Real Player and iTunes and Quicktime and other forms of auto update and anti-virus software that run all the time for no reason. Kill all that when doing multi channel audio on a daw. Some stuff will let ya disable it in its own preferences like Real Player, other stuff won't, so it should get uninstalled altogether if the developers didn't give you a choice.
 
Do some research on setting up Hardware Profiles in windows. These are very useful as you can set one for normal use, and then one exclusively for audio. You choose which profile to boot to before windows even starts up. The other really nice thing about hardware profiles is that you can disable services with profiles individually. So, you can disable all of your networking, anti-virus, and other services that use up some cpu in a music profile. Research hardware profiles, they take some time to get setup, but when you do it is definitely worth it.
 
Thanks for the replies, jdavidb and cawhite. It sounds like I'll be able to do what I want, provided I do some homework and learn more about customizing the hardware setup on my PC. I trust that whatever recording software I use will let me specify which audio i/o hardware I want to be using (or perhaps it defaults to whatever I've got specified in the hardware setup using the PC options). In any case, it sounds like the PCI versus firewire choice is not relevant as far as letting me do what I want to do.

Thanks again,
Greg
 
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