Audiophile 2496 and Sonar 2XL

[timothydog]

Hello everyone.

I'm currently recording my music with a Sound Blaster Live Platinum 5.1 through my mixer into the SPDIF input. I'm running Sonar 2XL and Windows XP Pro on an Athlon XP 2400+ 512RAM. My recording consists mainly of guitar and bass through a POD 2.0 and I use Battery with a fairly large sampled drumset (DFH).

I'm fairly happy with my results so far. The SBLive card has really done me well over the past 2 years. I was very happy with the soundfont capability for about a year until I recently moved to software synths. Now I'm feeling the urge to jump to the Audiophile 2496 card and start recording 24-bit guitars.

One of the main reasons for this jump is the problems the SBLive is now giving me ever since moving to Windows XP Pro. I get a lot of stuttering and distortion in games and even simply playing back mp3's. I've researched how to fix it and it appears to come down to just the SBLive being such a PCI bus hog.

My gut instinct was to go with the Audigy 2 Platinum but seeing how it was $200 I wanted to scope some other options. That's when the Audiophile 2496 caught my attention. It had superior recording capabilities and was also cheaper. I realise that it isn't really a gaming sound card so I plan on using my very capable onboard audio adapter on my Asus A7N8X motherboard when playing games. Reviews have it rivaling the Audigy2 in audio quality and performance.

I guess I'm looking for reassurance here or possibly tips from anyone whose made a similar switch. My computer is a very strong gaming machine (Radeon 9700 Pro) that needs to function well as a decent DAW as well. Also, I'm worried about how my sampled drum kit and Battery will work with this Audiophile card. The drum samples are 16 bit. Is that going to limit me to only recording other instruments in 16 bit?

Sorry to blather on and on.
Thanks,

Tim

 

[mbuster]

I went from a sblive to the Audiophile. Then I wondered why I ever had an sblive. You won't regret the switch. James will probably tell you to use both but he's gay. Just kidding James.

 

[James Argo]

It will be a great time to get the Audiophile 2496.
And about trouble you get with SB Live! (dist & crackling annoying sound) could be the driver. Once I had similiar problem, and end up uninstall & reinstall my WinXP Home. Sure you may also ditch the SB if you like, when you got Audiophile 2496

The drum samples are 16 bit. Is that going to limit me to only recording other instruments in 16 bit?

Probably. Or you can dither 'em to 24 bit first. I've heard it's better to do it in Wavelab, Soundforge or CoolEdit Pro 2 than SONAR. They just have better dither algorithmic -I don't understand thingee-. But I can hear the difference. The point is, you can't have both 16 bit and 24 bit at the same project. Use either one.


Jaymz

ps. I'm not gay. Pedullist, Paul, and BluesMeister are... they are Homo Studio user

 

[Scottgman]

You'll love it

Tim,

Don't even think twice about getting the Audiophile-- you'll love it! Unless of course you need more than 1 stereo (2 mono) inputs. That's the only bad thing about this card that I've discovered. I've only had my Audiophile for a couple months but I love this thing and I'm totally impressed with the recordings I'm creating. Disclaimer: I'm a newbie to PC recording so consider my advice appropriately.

I am also running XP and I have a SB Live. I haven't had any problems with conflicts between the two cards but I was having sound problems like you mentioned with the SB Live. The SB Live worked fine on games, MP3s etc., but when I tried to use it as the playback device in Sonar, it studdered BAD! I finally got that fixed today-- I updated the driver and re-ran Wave Profiler and badda-bing... it works great.

I would get rid of my SB Live, but I'm using it to power my PC speakers for use as monitors until I can get some real studio monitors. It's a pain when you have more than one person in the room wanting to listen to playback and all you have is one set of headphones-- doh! So until I get monitors, the SB Live is staying in my PC.

Cheers!

 

[timothydog]

Thanks for the replies.

I've tried a lot to fix my SBLive problem and I've come to the conclusion that it's a compatibility problem. I've heard many many people say the same thing.

As far as dithering my 16 bit samples.. Sounds interesting but I fear that there are too many samples to even bother with. My complete kit consists of 383 files and 230 megabytes. Unless there is an easy way to batch process the work, I will probably stay in 16-bit-land.

It will be a great time to get the Audiophile 2496.
And about trouble you get with SB Live! (dist & crackling annoying sound) could be the driver. Once I had similiar problem, and end up uninstall & reinstall my WinXP Home. Sure you may also ditch the SB if you like, when you got Audiophile 2496

Probably. Or you can dither 'em to 24 bit first. I've heard it's better to do it in Wavelab, Soundforge or CoolEdit Pro 2 than SONAR. They just have better dither algorithmic -I don't understand thingee-. But I can hear the difference. The point is, you can't have both 16 bit and 24 bit at the same project. Use either one.

 

[moskus]

As far as dithering my 16 bit samples.. Sounds interesting but I fear that there are too many samples to even bother with. My complete kit consists of 383 files and 230 megabytes. Unless there is an easy way to batch process the work, I will probably stay in 16-bit-land.

Batch-converting is included in SoundForge and I bet it's included in Wavelab and other editing software. Check it out. You only need to set up one file, and the program will convert the rest...