Effects : SoundBlaster Live! Platinum vs Guillemot MaxiStudio ISIS

[Chris67]

I plugged my (jazz) guitar yesterday evening on a friend's SB Live! Platinum.
I was impresed by the rather good quality of sound (compared to the little TB MontegoII I have) and especially by the variety of effects I could apply to my guitar's sound ! It gives dozens of effects, from classical reverbs, flangers or distortions to weird things such as "robotic", "underwater" and many other very interesting for guitar (Autowah, etc...)
I'm planning to buy a Guillemot MaxiStudio ISIS, which I think has a better overall sound quality.
But I wonder if it has such a large variety of effects.
Could anyone who already has an ISIS tell me about that ?

 

[mastahnke]

while I haven't my ISIS long I have liked it so far. The other guys might be able to tell you more about effects, but with the card comes a version of cool edit that has tons of effects to chose from. most of them are not real time and can only be done to a prerecorded track, but they work none the less. You can probably just get soem software to have effects in real time. The ISIS comes with Logic Audio, I think that does real tiem effects, not too sure though.

Hope I helped a little,
mike

 

[Chris67]

Thank you, Mike. But if someone knows more about REAL TIME effects, that's what I want to know

 

[Cooperman]

Yeah, I am seriously thinking about getting one of those Maxistudio ISIS things just cos they throw in all the software you need to get started.

I don't know the answer to your question but the Logic Audio 16-track software that comes with the package does support Direct X plugins and the all the other Logic Audio multitrack software do offer real time effects - so most likely the ISIS version does too. As to exactly what effects, if any, you get with this I don't know - I couldn't find any info on this myself when I recently looked for info on the ISIS. The package also comes with some version of Cool Edit which will no doubt have effects but Cool Edit doesn't offer real time effects.

Sorry I can't answer your question, I hope someone on here knows. Chris, if you do find out elsewhere, let me know.

Paul

 

[Ranger]

Chris,

I have the ISIS, and the sound quality is very good, in my opinion. And the breakout box is great...actually the reason I bought the card in the first place! I needed the digital ins and outs it offers.

ISIS comes with Cool Edit SE and a version of Logic Audio. There are some effects that come with Cool Edit (Reverb, Compression, Limiting, etc). And Logic Audio excepts Direct X plug ins, but I found the learning curve steep on it! For me, not too intuitive and the manual is vague at best. But my solution was to download and try out n-Tracks. I haven't looked back since! And there are a vast number of Direct X plug-ins you can download for free or which are very inexpensive which I think work well. My favorite "package" are the Blueline plug-ins.

Anyway, hope this helped. For the price ($280) and for what I needed, the ISIS was a good buy for me!
Ranger

 

[Gary Hendershot]

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Windows 95/98/NT4/2000 system drivers, ASIO support, Vegas Pro support...

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Info on LynxOne soundcard at: http://www.lynxstudio.com/

Independent audio tests of LynxOne at: http://www.pcavtech.com/soundcards/LynxONE/index.htm