Soundblaster? (oops)

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jpenr

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Hi - I'm just getting started with this stuff. A couple questions I'd be grateful for any advice on:

Sound card -- in a hurry, I bought my equipment along with a Soundblaster X-Fi card. I'm becoming aware (duh!) that this is not a very good card for recording music. What card would people recommend? Obviously I'm not technically inclined, I just want to make decent quality recordings without pulling my hair out.

External device? -- someone told me I don't need a sound card but should simply use an external device to plug into. I assume such a device digitizes the sound (has to be digitized somewhere), and I assume that such a device also includes.... a sound card inside it!?

Thanks for any comments.

Joe
 
Yeah...external is the way to go if you ask me. How many inputs would you be using? I generally only record acoustic guitar...sometimes in stereo...so I only ever use 2 inputs...some people use a lot more...especially if they are micing drums and what not...or whole bands.

If I were you I would go check out the firewire type externals at M-Audio or Presonus.

Check out their websites.

I use the Presonus Firebox...it's not the cheapest of the cheap range, but it is fairly affordable and I am very happy with the quality and ease of use.

I plan to buy a 2nd firewire external soon...something different from the Firebox. I really don't know what yet. I know it's gotta have decent preamps, reasonable gain and sensitivity and it needs to have a headphone out...of course...xlr inputs too...
 
thanks for your reply. I am going to be recording multiple instruments -- guitars, keys, voice. But, most of the time I'll be doing this on my own, and since I can only play one instrument at once (well apart from voice but I don't mind overtracking that) one input isn't too bad.

Firebox looks affordable. The dude who wrote one of the Sonar books recommends against an external device due to speed of processing concerns. Do you find any delay between when you play and when it records? I haven't had much experience yet but would think it would be difficult to synch things precisely if there's significant delay.

Which firewire external are you thinking of upgrading to, and why?

thanks,
Joe
 
A PCI card is pretty simple to do. Just plug and play. Nothing else needed. A Firewire box obviously requires a Firewire port on your puter and if yours doesn't have one, that will be an additional cost. USB interfaces are to limiting (with the possible exception of USB2.0 in which your box needs to be USB2.0 compliant). Latency between the PCI card and a firewire box will be about the same, depending on the quality of each. I personally like PCI cards better tied into a small mixer. M-Audio 24/96 PCI card and a Soundcraft Compact4 mixer is a good combo to start with. You can also get 0 latency with this setup. Not being as familiar with Firewire boxes, you may be able to get 0 latency with those too.
 
jpenr said:
I'm just getting started with this stuff ... I bought my equipment along with a Soundblaster X-Fi card.
Click to expand...

There's nothing wrong with that sound card. Especially if you're just getting started. Even if you were an expert there's nothing wrong with that sound card. Don't believe me? It's easy to prove. Find a CD you think sounds fabulous and record it through the sound card. Then play it back. Sound the same? There's your answer. :D

Of all the things a beginner needs to worry about, which sound card you use is near the bottom of the list. Much more important is having good monitor speakers, good microphones, and a good sounding room. That, and of course spending the time to become more experienced.

--Ethan
 
Ethan Winer said:
There's nothing wrong with that sound card. Especially if you're just getting started. Even if you were an expert there's nothing wrong with that sound card. Don't believe me? It's easy to prove. Find a CD you think sounds fabulous and record it through the sound card. Then play it back. Sound the same? There's your answer. :D
Click to expand...

As much as I don't think they are an "expert" soundcard, Ethan's test should EASILY show you whether or not it's good enough for you. In other words, if his test sounds the same to you, then a better soundcard would do you no good. Also, if your at the stage that your not even sure what to get, I would suggest trying some practice stuff out thru the SB and getting your feet a little wet. You can find multi-tracks of several songs in the MP3 Mixing Clinic, that I suggest you download and get some practice with. Lastly, read, read and then read some more. As Ethan pointed out, gear is not going to make great recordings......it can help a little, but when you get to the point that it's holding you back, you'll know what you need to improve your sound.
 
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thanks all for thoughts. glad the Soundblaster wasn't a total mistake. I did very much appreciate the 'plug and play' nature of the card.

I will try Ethan's test. Though I suppose that test wouldn't get at the issue of latency (?)

What's clear is that I have a lot to learn! And the books tend to put me to sleep. I'm kind of the "mess-with-it-til-you-figure-it-out" kind of guy, and that doesn't necessarily work with this stuff at this stage.

J
 
As far as quallity of the sounblaster goes it's fine, but there are benefits to moving up to a card actually geared for recording. Like getting used to seeing, and dealing with multiple in-puts. A $100 PCI interface is never a bad investment as long as you can afford the $100 and you have nothign to gain but knowledge. I would deffinetly say pick up an M-audio, or if you never plan on touching vista an E-mu.

As far as quality goes though there should be nothign wrong with the Soublaster.
 
jpenr said:
thanks for your reply. I am going to be recording multiple instruments -- guitars, keys, voice. But, most of the time I'll be doing this on my own, and since I can only play one instrument at once (well apart from voice but I don't mind overtracking that) one input isn't too bad.

Firebox looks affordable. The dude who wrote one of the Sonar books recommends against an external device due to speed of processing concerns. Do you find any delay between when you play and when it records? I haven't had much experience yet but would think it would be difficult to synch things precisely if there's significant delay.

Which firewire external are you thinking of upgrading to, and why?

thanks,
Joe
Click to expand...

Zero delay. It records in real time...I mean minus the milliseconds it may take to go from the mic, through the cable, through the preamps, through the firewire cable and onto my harddrive. If I wanted to play a midi keyboard and record some cool synth sounds or processed sonds then I don't know...maybe it would be more of a delay...but I don't record like this. I record actual played sound and it is not a problem.

I'm not sure what firewire device I want to upgrade to. I'm not really upgrading. I'm perfectly happy with the Firebox....it's just that I have moved overseas and didn't bring any of my gear with me...but now I wanna set something up and thought, ah well, I can buy a second device for recording here where I am now.

Having said that, I might just have my Firebox sent over to me in the mail. Recently I had my mobo, gfx card and what not sent to me because I wanted to do some gaming. So I might as well have the rest of my audio gear sent too. All but my sweet, sweet M-Audio BX5's...they'll be too costly to ship. I'll have to put up with headphone mixing and PC speakers.

Firewire, to me, is a better option than usb. But really, that was my thinking 2 years ago...I think usb might even be pretty ok to use now...although back in the day it did have latency problems and data transfer limitations.

The other thing is that I have a very stable PC and quite powerful and well set up and maintained.
 
Ethan Winer said:
There's nothing wrong with that sound card. Especially if you're just getting started. Even if you were an expert there's nothing wrong with that sound card.
--Ethan
Click to expand...


ethan... whats up buddy??? i'm glad you posted this over here... i was gonna ask you about it over at lynns but didn't want to hi-jack the thread...


in reguards to your soundblather... i had read somewhere that they have bundled in their installation some bloatware that is NOT optional... and cant be turned off... like a dither and pseudo stereo processor for video... and despite saying it will do 24bit at up to 192 that the files all end up rendered at 16/44... you know anything about this??? thnx... appreciate ya brother...
 
jpenr said:
The dude who wrote one of the Sonar books recommends against an external device due to speed of processing concerns.
Click to expand...
He was probably talking more along the lines of USB interfaces. It's always best, if you can, to go with Firewire or PCI. Firewire is becoming the norm, if not already.

jpenr said:
Though I suppose that test wouldn't get at the issue of latency (?)
Click to expand...
If you're using ASIO drivers with your SB, which you should be, you can adjust the latency in the options panel of Sonar. I assume you're using Sonar because of your comment about the Sonar book.
 
dementedchord said:
i had read somewhere that they have bundled in their installation some bloatware that is NOT optional... and cant be turned off... like a dither and pseudo stereo processor for video... and despite saying it will do 24bit at up to 192 that the files all end up rendered at 16/44... you know anything about this??? thnx... appreciate ya brother...
Click to expand...

SoundBlasters do install a bunch of junk, but it can all be turned off easily with a few switches on the SB control panel. Most of the junk is reverb and other presets for specific games. I have all of that disabled globally and it's never an issue. I use my SB only for editing SoundFonts, though I did record and play through it for that test at Lynn's forum.

--Ethan
 
I bought a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz a long time ago, because of all the sound cards on the market, it had the best test results. You might could get one on ebay pretty cheap.

Truth is, the Turtle Beach is easily not the weakest link in my chain. My $400 of mics and mixers, otoh, could easily be improved on.
 
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