finally got me a soundcard, should be on its way....

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Basslord1124

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Well I finally decided on a soundcard....getting the Echo Mia. I figure it would work fine for my applications especially since I'll really use the 1/4" ins/outs. As I told someone before I don't like getting something and not having much use for 95% of it. The Mia has already been ordered and I'm guessing should be here anytime this week (I'm hoping it'll get here today though hehe). I've installed a CD Burner before (which of course I know is much different than a soundcard) and I'm sure I could install this thing with ease. As a side note I DO read instructions. hehe

One of my questions though is in the past when I've recorded on the PC (usually just experimenting, not seriously recording) I've been able to record fine, but playing it back was a nightmare since I could play back 2 tracks and they'd lose sync part of the way through. Needless to say, very annoying to listen to. Obviously this was with the stock soundcard. I thought more RAM would solve it but even at 192MB of RAM it still lost sync and skipped on playback. So my question is will the Mia do this or will it playback without any problems? If it can playback more than 2 full length tracks then that it is all the proof I need LOL. I always looked at a soundcard as sort of mini processor converting analog signals to digital data and vice versa. And my assumption would be that the stock soundcard couldn't do this fast enough since it was made more for just an average PC user and not someone doing recording. And if can get a card more designed for recording the processing power would be faster and thus playing back 2 wav files would be nothing for it. Are my assumptions somewhat right or is it something completely different?

If there is anything else I need to know, let me know, thanks. :)
 
Good question. I've never had that happen to me, and I'm sure there are people reading this thread who know far more about this stuff than I do, but if your tracks are coming out of sync during playback (or skipping), it could have something to do with your hard drive speed.

What kind of drives do you have in your machine?
 
Any soundcard can lose synch between tracks, click and pop, etc., if it's configured wrong, using the wrong timing reference, etc. A "stock" soundcard can usually handle as many tracks as a more expensive soundcard, all else being equal. The better card will typically have better A/D and D/A converters and better input connections, but either card should work properly if the drivers are stable and the configuration is correct.
 
ok, I'll keep that in mind. Thanks. If I ever do have problems with tracks losing sync I'll let you all know so the problem can be fixed. And ifpo, it's a 20 gig 5200 rpm hard drive...I wouldn't think IT would have a problem playing 2 tracks. I mean I've heard the faster the hard drive the better but I believe I've also heard people get by "decently" with a 5200 rpm hard drive. I don't really have plans to be a track hog or anything, I figure the most I'd ever use would be 15-20 and to me that almost seems like overkill. I might average around 10 I guess. You think my current hard drive could handle that?
 
It's 5400rpm, right? What about the controller? Is it a UDMA-33 or UDMA-66 controller? That's important, 'cause if you are not running it in one of those modes, you'll have trouble.
 
yeah 5400 I mean. Explain the UDMA-33 or UDMA-66 controller thing to me. I'm confused there. Feel free to post it here or email me if you'd like: Basslord1124@aol.com Thanks. :)
 
The UDMA controller is a more modern drive controller design than the former IDE; its speed approaches that of SCSI drives.

Most motherboards I know of now have UDMA drive controllers on board, as well as the older IDE/EIDE one.

Sorry if that's a lame explanation, I don't know that much about it. I also don't know off the top of my head how you can tell what your drive is running off of. Cakewalk used to recommend a utility called wintune that would run your system through a battery of hardware tests to benchmark it...

Here, from Cakewalk's website:

"Your audio hard disk must have an 'uncached' or 'sustained' transfer rate of 3.1 MB per second or higher. A free program called WinTune is available from www.winmag.com that will test your hard drive performance and report your uncached transfer rate."

See http://www.cakewalk.com/support/express/faq.htm#38 for more info...
 
ok, I gotcha. The motherboard on our PC is the original one and our computer is probably around 3 to 4 years old and still going strong. I'll just wait until the soundcard arrives to see if everything will go well. If I do have problems I'll post em. The winmag site must be down or something, wasn't able to access it. I did a Google search on Wintune and got a few sites, haven't downloaded it yet though. Probably will sometime soon. But anyways thanks so far.
 
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