A music sound card

Prunepicker

Prunepicker

Bassist, Arranger & Teach
Any suggestions for a good sound card that a musician can
afford? I use Garritan sounds with Finale and the current sound
card, Realtek, doesn't cut it.

No gaming, just music.
 
Depends on what you plan to do. You want to go with an external interface. Internal soundcards are all pretty much worthless for recording. What type/number of inputs/outputs are you needing?
 
jimmys69 said:
Depends on what you plan to do. You
want to go with an external interface. Internal soundcards are all
pretty much worthless for recording. What type/number of
inputs/outputs are you needing?
Click to expand...
I use Finale, music notation software. I don't record. I need
something that will sound better than the Realtek card that's
in the laptop. If there's an external one that's fine.

I'm think what I need is something that is used for listening.
Funny that the samples on the Internet sound good but on my
laptop they stink.
 
Hmm...Then I really do not have an answer for you there. I do know that pretty much any basic external interface will have better D/A conversion than a 50 cent internal chip. You could easily pick up something like a Lexicon Alpha for $60, hook it up to some monitors, and see if it gives you sound you like. Take it back if it doesn't. I am not sure if the soundblasters are any better for listening to audio, and I am also not sure that they make anything for a laptop.

Someone will be around to give better advice than I am capable of here. :D
 
Just to be clear, an external soundcard would be connected to your laptop via firewire or usb. What it will do is basically replace the duties of the internal soundcard.
 
If you have a laptop an external is your only option, but they are slower than internals (unless it's an eSATA or USB 3.0) and have more latency issues. It only stands to reason. An internal sound card's speed is dictated by the type of card (a PCI utilizing the IDE or SATA) which is connected directly to the motherboard on one of the internal slots and will have a minimum of 133 MBs speed, much better than USB 2.0 or Firewire 800.

Almost all new computer desktops are now utilizing SATA or SATA 2 connections to the motherboard, rather than the old IDE, which is still faster than Firewire 800 or USB 2.0.

Anyways, the facts are these, from slowest to fastest:

* USB 1.1 = 12 Mbs (which is the same as 1.5 MBs)
* Firewire 400 = 400 Mbs (50 MBs)
* USB 2.0 = 480 Mbs (which is the same as 60 MBs)
* Firewire 800 = 800 Mbs (100 MBs)
* Conventional internal IDE, now known as Parallel ATA or PATA => 133 MBs, but can go higher if SATA connections on motherboard go to internal slots (see below).
* Serial ATA (SATA 1) = 150 MBs
* SATA 2 = 3 Gbs (300 MBs)
* Ultra SCSI = 320 MBs
* USB 3.0 = 3.2 Gbs (realistically achieving 400 MBs) theoretically higher up to 5 Gbs.
* SATA 3 = 6 Gbs (600 MBs)
* Firewire's future 6.4 Gb/s (768 MB/s)


NOTE: To turn Megabits/second (Mbs) into MegaBytes/second (MBs), divide by 8.
 
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