PCI-express audio suggestions

[Simman]

I'm about to purchase a new computer and am looking for advice/suggestions on an audio card especially since it will only have PCI-Express slots.

I will not be using the computer to record anything, I have a studio for that. The only thing I'll be using the new computer for is to get some preliminary ideas for the mix (at home) before working the final mix back in the studio.

I don't see a benefit for (me) going with a FireWire interface but any suggestions and/or thoughts would be welcome.

Thanks

 

[dgatwood]

I'm about to purchase a new computer and am looking for advice/suggestions on an audio card especially since it will only have PCI-Express slots.

I will not be using the computer to record anything, I have a studio for that. The only thing I'll be using the new computer for is to get some preliminary ideas for the mix (at home) before working the final mix back in the studio.

I don't see a benefit for (me) going with a FireWire interface but any suggestions and/or thoughts would be welcome.

Thanks

Most recent machines have built-in audio hardware. If all you're doing is monitoring, I'd just use that. You'll have a higher noise floor (and maybe some other types of minor distortion), but it's not going to be enough worse to warrant buying expensive hardware, IMHO.

If it doesn't have built-in audio output, just grab some Creative PCIe card. For test monitoring, it probably isn't worth doing much better than that. If you want to upgrade from that in the PCIe space, the next step up in quality is to really high end hardware. Nobody in the mid-range space builds anything PCIe because there's no market for it. FireWire and USB are a lot easier to work with, so the only things that went PCIe are either bottom-end junk for gamers who don't want an external box (Creative) or high-end gear that needs more channels than FireWire can handle (e.g. a stack of MOTU HD192 interfaces hanging off a PCIe 424 card).

 

[Simman]

Thanks for the response dgatwood. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing but I just hate to have to keep telling myself to use the built in audio. Oh well, I'll just use it and see how it goes. I can always keep on the lookout for a used FireWire interface if need be.