delta 44 w/ my setup

[Khords]

I have completed treating my home studio (empty, spare bedroom) with one bass trap and midrange trap per wall and ceiling, plus trapping the corners of the room. I built these traps myself based on Ethan Winer's plans. I must say the "boxy" sound is definitely gone from my recordings but am still getting some noise and latency problems from the AC97 onboard soundcard. I'm considering a Delta 44 (recordings are all acoustic w/ vocals) plus adding 1GB of RAM to my box.
Heres my questions:
With the AC97, the vocalist is not able to hear themselves thru the headphones during overdub (this is a big issue at times). Will the delta 44 allow this? If not, what do I need?

I am part of an acoustic/vocal duo. I play guitar, bass, mandolin, resonator guitar and sing harmony on the recordings. When I record, I would like to able to record the guitar and bass (partner plays also) at the same time, then overdub both vocals at once. I'm assuming the delta 44 would fill this need?

The specs on delta 44 says its a PCI Host card. I don't know if my Windows XP Home accomodates that. Will it or no?

Here are some specs on my computer:
Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 1 (build 2600)
ECS K7SOM+ 1.0 motherboard
Bus Clock: 100 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 07.00T 04/02/01
1200 megahertz AMD Duron
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
64 kilobyte secondary memory cache
248 Megabytes Installed Memory

C-Media AC97 Audio Device
MPU-401 Compatible MIDI Device
Standard Game Port
Unimodem Half-Duplex Audio Device

Standard floppy disk controller
Primary IDE Channel [Controller]
Secondary IDE Channel [Controller]
SiS PCI IDE Controller

SiS 7001 PCI to USB Open Host Controller
SiS 7001 PCI to USB Open Host Controller
SiS PCI to USB Enhanced Host Controller

recording software: N-Track Studio and SoundForge 7

Based on all the above, what card would you get?
Thanks for any advice.

 

[ace516]

midiman or maudio 44?
midiman delta 44 won't work with XP.. just get the maudio 2044.. that shoulld work

 

[DonF]

With the AC97, the vocalist is not able to hear themselves thru the headphones during overdub (this is a big issue at times). Will the delta 44 allow this?

Yes. Using the "zero-latency monitoring" feature, you would route the signal from the microphone back to the Delta's outputs, without going through the computer first. This signal is mixed with the previously recorded material coming from the computer to create the vocalist's monitor mix.

... I would like to able to record the guitar and bass (partner plays also) at the same time, then overdub both vocals at once. I'm assuming the delta 44 would fill this need?

Yes, that's one of the applications the Delta is designed to support.

The specs on delta 44 says its a PCI Host card. I don't know if my Windows XP Home accomodates that. Will it or no?

According to http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Delta44-focus.html, XP SP1 is the minimum requirement (for an XP system). So, yes, your XP system should work fine.

ace516, where do you get your information about the 44 not working with XP?

Don

 

[AlChuck]

midiman or maudio 44?

While Midiman and M-Audio are the same company, their Delta soundcards were always labeled with the M-Audio name -- in fact, they adopted the name M-Audio because they thought the name MIDIMan would cause people to think that all they made was MIDI hardware...

Also, as DonF implied, the Delta cards work beautifully under XP -- they were one of the first cards on the market to have good WDM drivers.

Yes. Using the "zero-latency monitoring" feature, you would route the signal from the microphone back to the Delta's outputs, without going through the computer first. This signal is mixed with the previously recorded material coming from the computer to create the vocalist's monitor mix.

Just to be clear here, the Delta 44 has no headphone output. You can route the input to the output but you have to route the outputs to something else that can drive speakers and has a headphone jack too. This is one of the things that mixers are for.

I sort if got the sense from Khords' questions that he doesn't have an external mixer. If this is true, the Delta 44 by itself won't give him this capability. He'll need an external mixer, or perhaps a more all-in-one solution like the M Audio OMNI Studio or another manufacturer's product...

 

[Khords]

Yes, I have an external mixer but found it was creating more noise in the chain. I had resorted to using the speaker input as a headphone input. Apparently, I'll have to start using the mixer again and deal with the noise problem it creates.

Thanks for the responses, guys. I do appreciate it.

 

[seryozha]

Yes, I have an external mixer but found it was creating more noise in the chain. I had resorted to using the speaker input as a headphone input. Apparently, I'll have to start using the mixer again and deal with the noise problem it creates.

Thanks for the responses, guys. I do appreciate it.

you can also look into getting a heaphone mixer. it will accept the outputs from the delta and then convert it into a headphone out...or two. They are cheaper than mixers (for the most part).

 

[DonF]

I'll have to start using the mixer again and deal with the noise problem it creates.

If your noisy mixer is only on the output side of the signal path, at least you won't be recording the noise. Do you have preamps besides those in the mixer? Or are the mixer's preamps adequate?

 

[Khords]

Don F,
The powered mixer, Peavey MD5, was causing the noise floor to rise in the recordings. I quit using it, bought a Tube Pac preamp/compressor unit and MK319 mic, then plugged straight in to the computer with better results. The Peavey didn't have the 48K phantom power the condenser mic needed anyway.
I did try running that thru the mixer but the noise was still there. I'm looking for another mixer...

 

[noisedude]

I've run my Delta 44 with the first XP, XP SP1, and now XP SP2 all with no problems.

 

[gordone]

My Delta 44 works on XP, I also had it running on Windows 2000, and Windows 98, all flawlessly, going back to the year 2000! (6 years and still ticking!)

midiman or maudio 44?
midiman delta 44 won't work with XP.. just get the maudio 2044.. that shoulld work