Hello People!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Toki987
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Toki987

Toki987

Rock Steady
Hi folks. Im a newbie here. I use PA9 and Sonar XL. Im a bassist that has learned a little keyboarding over the years. I don`t have a lot of cash to put in my studio so im limited to basics. I have an Athlon @ 1.3 ghx, SB16 PCI, 512 meg ram, a Fender mixer, a Krog DW8000, and use a really nice set of old Jensen reference monitors for playback. I`m having a blast leaning to use the features of Sonar and PA9 and the sound card does a really good job as long as I don`t edit very fast. Once i get the track set up and play in the part I usually mute unneeded tracks until I get the track edited like I want. Then I turn em all back on. Otherwise I might get glitches while editing with all tracks on.
I have a question though. I can`t afford one of those full-horsepower sound cards like the sw1000xg or an MOTU, so Im looking at a SB live 5.1 or the next one up. Will I appreciate a considerable difference in quality and less glitchs than with the SB16PCI ? Are there any SBlive users that wish to comment?
Thanks,
Ken
 
Stay the f#ck away from soundblaster!

I have as many others a audiophile 2496 its much better although it does not have soundfont capabilities.Here's a link, this card can be found cheaper with some searching.

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7...8068346885/search/g=home/detail/base_id/52393

These threads are filled with the woes of SB cards.
Also if you are running 2000 or XP you can take advantage of the realtime playing of softsynths with the wdm drivers.

There are other entry level "PRO" cards available but I can not speak to them as I am limited by my own experience.

Once again STAY THE F#CK AWAY FROM SOUNDBLASTER!
 
Get the Audiophile 2496. I have both the SBLive and Audiophile and they are worlds apart in terms of sound and performance (latency).
 
acidrock said:
Stay the f#ck away from soundblaster!


Once again STAY THE F#CK AWAY FROM SOUNDBLASTER!
Click to expand...

For what ? PC Games ?
Once I used SBLive! 5.1. I still use it in my second PC. Playing a PC games stuff. SB is for gamers. NOT musicians.

Music creation ? Don't use it. Better use Audiophile 2496. Trust us, it works better than SB for music works.
 
Toki987 said:
I use PA9 and Sonar XL.
Click to expand...

I'm just currious, don't mean to jump on you, or anything... ;)

But why do you use both?


Oh! And SoundBlaster sucks! But I still use it for soundfonts...
 
Re: Re: Hello People!

moskus said:


I'm just currious, don't mean to jump on you, or anything... ;)

But why do you use both?

Oh! And SoundBlaster sucks! But I still use it for soundfonts...
Click to expand...



well...., in May a good friend gave me PA9 and all I had was an AC97 chip on my mb, which sucked with PA9 and anything I`d try to do with dxi. I have 3 different sound cards which were all ISA. I was in Walmart and got a deal on a sb16pci for almost nothing, and I didnt have any extra cash to drop on a nicer card at the time. A friend came by and heard some of the jams. A few weeks later Sonar XL came as a gift to me. By that time I had gotten somewhat proficient with PA9. I`m doing some stuff with Sonar, its very good but I`m faster with PA9 when I have an idea i need to stick before its lost. I use Sonar to do the more finite stuff but I`m very limited with the SB.
I spent about half the last 50 yrs sitting beside a 2" tape machine or thru the glass and across the room from it. Being married with kids, one starting college in spring, demands that I be thrifty with my toy expense. This thing started a few months ago as a therapy,... its gotten back to sustenance already. ;)

Ken
 
---I use one. I'm poor too! -An SBLive is a good deal, if you get it at the right price. It's definitely better than just about every onboard sound chip I've heard. You can get it from at least two different places online for $32 + shipping, for the OEM/whitebox version. The OEM card may not have the free software, but you've already got better software anyway. ~ Yes, an Audiophile is a better card, but the Audiophile costs six times as much.
---Creative cards in general tend to have poor latency unless you use soundfonts, which have very low or no lag. Running soundfonts is the one area where EMu/Creative cards kick a$$. And soundfonts rule if you're poor, because there are good soundfonts of pretty much every instrument out there on the web for free.
One -big- list:
http://www.thesoundsite.net/
...
---I have already looked into the OEM SBL recently for someone else: as far as I could find out, there are no sub-standard OEM hardware versions. The cards are all the same; it's just the box and free software that's different.
---By the by, PA9 *might* not run soundfonts on a SBL... I got Cakewalk Express Gold 8 with my (retail) SBL card about 18 months ago, and even though it came included with the SBL, it would only run soundfonts on the EMu 32 and 64 cards......
 
Another note: when you install a SBLive, it installs with three different MIDI banks: a 2-meg, a 4-meg and an 8-meg. The 4-meg is the default; the 8-meg sounds noticeably better. If you didn't try it with bigger soundfont banks, then you didn't do it right. ~~~ I generally run a 25-meg bank for playing around, and there are banks that are over 100 megs... There are piano banks that are over 50 megs alone, for a single instrument.
-All of these run with essentially no lag. The card's drivers permit you to use up to 128 megs of RAM for your soundfonts, but there's a registry hack that can get around that limit.
 
Soundfont is THE ONLY BENEFIT of SB. Period. Get better card while you can afford.
 
There are no better soundcards for $32.
:D
-This happens a lot: somebody asks how to do basic recording on their computer for a small amount of money, and people belly up and recommend monstrously expensive "pro-wannabe" setups.
...
An SBL sounds far better than casette tape; you can use an SBL to make CD's that ordinary people will not be able to tell you made, just from listening to on an ordinary stereo, if you use the line-in and if it's mixed well. (the line-in does sound better than the mic jack, and is stereo besides) -And Sonar can do pretty much everything you need mixing-wise, except burn, of course. The results won't be "pro-quality", but it doesn't cost you pro-quality prices either.
 
If you've got sonar xl thats a "pro" software,to mate it with a low quality card is essentially a waste.
You can't take advantage of multiple inputs and real time effects you may as well have one of the lesser cakewalk products.
 
Okay DougC, you probably right...
I only recommend SBLive for them who NEVER use any soundcard before, and he / she is on tight budget, while do music as a hobby / newbie. Never say it's so bad and ugly, it's very good indeed. But after months you get more serious, you'll realized that it lacks alot of cons when you expecting more pro features. So...? I guess you know the rest.
 
Understood, i copy, and yes ya`ll are right, everybody. This rig I have now is nothing like the old familiarity of an SQ80, AKAI 900, Roland 88, and tx81Z modules from yrs ago. I know a little about that type of quality. But those toys are all gone and this is the way I have to get it done now. I found a couple of nice prices on the 2496 (at the sights recommended) and its not totally out of reach, the specs are A+, except no sounds. I may pick up the SB live anyway for now, to cover some ground till I can arrange funding for the 2496 (I hear there`s an allnight convenience store down the road).
The 16 plays xg, gs, gm, and I can load the 2, 4, or 8 meg library with it and it does sound good after all edits are done, saved, and seq' reloaded to play. The chip just can`t handle edits in realtime, the poly is unpredictable, latency can be problem with dxi,and it gets confused with intensive midi/audio. Maybe the Emu can handle it better till I can afford to get a 2496 (or better) and a sound box. I move a few PC`s and can probly unload the SB`s in them and recover some $. IF I can`t use PA9 with the live its ok. I can use Sonar, Im just not used to widening out those little track panes yet

Ken
 
I've been using an SBLive for a while now with CEP2 and now Sonar 1 and to tell you the truth, I've yet to find anyone's recordings in the mix section that sound noticeably better than my sblive stuff. I'm doing stuff with 20 tracks of instruments and have amazingly cool(and free) synth and drum tones thanks to the soundfont technology. Sure, I lust after the high end cards, but to remedy that, I simply think back to the gear that the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppeling and Queen were stuck with, and their stuff sounds pretty good to my ears, so I feel pretty lucky to have access to 20(or more, never needed that many so far) tracks of clean, clear audio that I can do things to that they never imagined.

Song First
Performance Second
Recording Quality Third

Every great track that I know of seems to follow that 3 step protocol. Hell, most of the new garage bands sound horrible on a sonic level and most hip hop and pop records dont have any real instruments, and the only people I hear complaining are other musicians... most regular music fans have no problem with sonics or instruments, as long as the end product is a great song they can get hooked on.
 
If you want/need multiple inputs, you need something else... -but it's funny how people will say that "all cards have some MIDI lag with external devices" and "all softsynths have some lag", and then completely ignore the fact that that's what soundfonts are supposed to overcome.
?
One place that has it for $32 is MWave.com:
go to "product catalog"->"multimedia-sound cards"->"creative", and the last two cards listed are SBLives. -The $62 one is the pretty retail box and "free" software, the $32 [white box] one is a plain box and no "free" software.
Amazing, ain't it?
:D
 
with the SB live do you have to run lines from output to input to record midi to audio like I have to do with the SB16 ?
Ken
 
with the SB live do you have to run lines from output to input to record midi to audio like I have to do with the SB16 ?
Click to expand...
No, the multitrack software should be able to do it. -But for a long time I didn't know that, so I used the SBLive's recorder on the "what you hear" setting, played the MIDI/soundfont file, and then re-imported the newly-recorded sound file.
Either way it works.
You can also download Total Recorder and try using that the same way.
 
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That`s good cause I want to eliminate the outboard mixer, its a big old Fender mixer, sounds ok, but Its too big and needs to go. I intend replace it with the small 4 or 6 ch Behringer.

Ken
 
Toki987, replacing an old outboard mixer has nothing to do here with SBLive! unless you want to go higher with multi input card like Maudio. IMHO, you'll want mackie VLZ 1202 at least. Simple, small enough to fit your space, yet it has a great profesional sound quality...
 
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