Latency - sound card?

[marmite]

Hi,

I'm using Cubase SX to record Midi at the moment, but will be putting down some audio tracks later.
I have a lot of latency.
I've set Cubase to the lowest setting possible, I'm using Asio (I tried installing Asio4all but it didn't work), I'm wondering if it's my soundcard - a standard SigmaTel....

If it is the sound card, what should I buy? There's a lot of talk about external sound cards, but that makes me nervous as I've always used an internal card.....

Thanks!

 

[jimmys69]

Don't get nervous man. Get an interface.

Yes, the internal card is you evil nemesis.

 

[Singtall]

yep, get a new card. external interfaces are generally very good nowadays. one thing that can be avoided (using an external interface) is the internal noise a pc puts out.

 

[Btyre2013]

get an audient ID22, or something with zero latency DSP monitoring then turn on 'asio latency compensation' in Cubase.

 

[ecc83]

yep, get a new card. external interfaces are generally very good nowadays. one thing that can be avoided (using an external interface) is the internal noise a pc puts out.

I must, and will always protest at the blanket condemnation of internal soundcards for picking up internal PC noise. They just don't. At least not in my experience.

Attached is a spectrum I have just run of a generated neg 40 1kHz .wav and you can see that there are no artifacts above about -100dBFS. I have just done this on a new Asus MA97 MOBO with an AMD 6 core 3.5G CPU which I have built to replace my old P4 XP machine. I have taken no special precautions, just plugged in the 2496 sound cards (there are two) and Bob's yer mother's brother.

I WILL agree that the PCI card has had its day, a bit and there are many very good external USB AIs now about but if you happen to have a decent mixer on hand(I do) a PCI or PCIe card is a very viable option.

Dave.