Best Soundcard for Sonar Home Studio 6 XL?

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Darktangent

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I just purchased Sonar a couple weeks ago. Aside from the fact that it's the most difficult peice of software I've ever worked with, I have been having problems with my MIDI Keyboard and MIDI to USB interface. I'm looking to spend about 240-300 on a new soundcard, as cakewalk's technical support said something about the soundcard being old (they had me make some adjustments, I'm assuming they lowered the quality but I have no idea what the heck they actually did). I'm kinda wondering if I should ditch the MIDI to USB interface too, or whether there's any difference between that and just plain MIDI to a MIDI port on a new soundcard. Help is appreciated!
 
Welcome to the board, never fear, help is near. We can certainly help you wade through the software problems you may have. I know it can be very frustrating getting started.

As far as your soundcard goes, and all your other hardware for that matter, it helps to be more specific about what you already have, and what you want to accomplish. What are your computer's specs? CPU, ram, bus speed perhaps, even your hard drive speed can all affect how audio is treated. Do you know what type of soundcard you have? is in the onboard kind? or does it fit on a motherboard slot?

What instrument do you play? Are you a keyboardist? Do you know how to tell if your USB midi device is working or not? That's enough dumb questions from me, but it'll get us started.
 
Alright, lets get it started. Athlon 64 X2 3200+, 2GB RAM, Soundblaster Audigy, Radioshack MD-1700 keyboard, Line6 PodXT, Yamaha UX16 MIDI to USB interface. As far as instruments, I play keyboard, guitar, and bass, and I do vocals through the PodXT as well. I did alot of messing around with Sonar today and figured out alot of new things. I'm up to recording synth tracks, looping them, adding new tracks and layering them. I screwed around with drums some with session drummer but I was having problems with the interface being retarded, playing stuff when I didn't want it to. Origionally I was having problems with latency--notes being bunched together and a half second or so delay from hitting the note on the keyboard to hearing it on the computer. I called technical support and they had me make a few changes, the most important one being a change in drivers from ASIO or WDM (can't remember which is the preset) to whatever the shittier driver is. It pretty much reduced the latency to an un-noticable amount, and the note bunching to only occuring when I play extremely fast. After today, I really don't see myself spending 300 or so on a new soundcard. I can't imagine it being that much better than it is.
 
You certainly have enough computer for just about anything.
It sounds like you could expect issues with the Audigy Soundcard drivers, Window WDM, and the USB driver. Too bad you can't use the Asio drivers, these bypass all of the Windows management and deal directly with your soundcard. I don't know much about the Audigy's compiance with the Asio standard. I'm pretty sure that Cakewalk support has a propensity to recommend WDM drivers over the faster, and more stable Asio driver. If your hardware problem is now solved, great! If not, you might look into a free app called Asio4All that supposedly lets devices that don't normally support it run. If you wanted to upgrade in the future, I would indeed start with an Asio supported soundcard.
 
Oh, and as for your actual question, I'd recommend something cheap like a Delta card. There are a millions choices out there, but I'd start with a proven performer.
 
+2 on the M-Audio Delta series. Solid, stable, good support and good sound for the money.
 
Honestly, most recording software is pretty difficult to learn at first, primarily because with any piece of software that does as much as sequencers do, there's a LOT to learn!!! Don't give up though: once you learn one, it's much easier to learn most others because you're familiar with the terms used and what the software is capable of.

As for a sound card, the Audigy (as I'm sure you know now) is a consumer card for playing back video game/music/movie audio, moreso than recording (although it is technically capable of doing so). The nice thing about Sonar (and basically any software EXCEPT pro-tools) is that it can work with almost any sound card out there! Which one is "the best" is largely dependent on what you'd like to be able to do with it. Ask yourself these questions:

- "How many tracks do I want to be able to record at once? Will I be recording an entire band, or just myself?"

- "How much do I want to spend? Is upgradeability important?"

Once you've answered those to, you/we can get into more specifics, like what features you want/need, which specific cards to look into, etc.
 
I think the question now is, what will spending $300 on a soundcard do? What are the advantages of having a nice soundcard? Will it make the synth tones sound alot nicer? I've never really known what exactly a soundcard does, just that if you don't have one you can't hear shit. Right now there's about 20 different things I want to get; New guitar, one of those electric or w/e they're called drum sets, a pedal or two--and that's just music stuff.
 
A halfway decent soundcard is a must for any kind of recording with a computer, IMHO. The Soundblasters and their ilk just don't sound as good. Period.

The good news is that you can get a recording soundcard for as little as 100 bucks. M-Audio has options in that range. Or, if you really don't want a new card, you can get a firewire or usb interface.

A soundcard changes audio to digital information, and vice-versa. That's it. You can't do anything with audio in a computer until you convert it to digital. Then, you can't hear it until you convert it back to audio.

There's no reason to use a sub-par soundcard if you're recording music with your computer.

Put it another way: Would you put plastic toy-guitar strings on your Gibson?
 
Darktangent said:
I think the question now is, what will spending $300 on a soundcard do? What are the advantages of having a nice soundcard? Will it make the synth tones sound alot nicer? I've never really known what exactly a soundcard does, just that if you don't have one you can't hear shit. Right now there's about 20 different things I want to get; New guitar, one of those electric or w/e they're called drum sets, a pedal or two--and that's just music stuff.
Click to expand...

No, the question(s) is(are) what I asked you...
 
good thread I'm using an USB Creative Sh*t blaster and I'm ready to step up to a better card. This one works but I would like a better one.
 
David J Sims said:
good thread I'm using an USB Creative Sh*t blaster and I'm ready to step up to a better card. This one works but I would like a better one.
Click to expand...

Year and years ago I started using a Soundblaster and could not understand what benefit I would get in going to a "pro" card. After two years of struggling to get a decent sound out of the s/blaster plus all the latency crap (pre ASIO), I bought a Delta 66+omni.

No comparison in sound between the two sound cards:) The problem is, convincing folk that that is true. Of course, it then means you need to upgrade your monitors, microphone, recording environment etc:(

Welcome to the world of perpetual upgrades ;)

:D
 
You could check out the emu0404usb for about 200US. It seems to have pretty good specs according to the rightmark results people have posted. I emailed emu about the jitter a while back if you want to know.

I used one for a while too, and it came with a nice bundle of software. But I needed to switch to Pro Tools hardware and software for compatibility.

One thing that very slightly annoyed me about it, was the main volume control on the unit wouldn't turn down the volume *completely*. There'd be just that trickle of sound still coming through the speakers.
 
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