How Much for a Good...

  • Thread starter Thread starter aKa
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aKa

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soundcard that has midi...

for sum reason my piece of crap comp don't got no midi drive...

What are the general prices for soundcards or whateva wit midi drives...

can i get a good one for 50 bucks ???
 
Turtle Beach Montego II or Santa Cruz, or Sound Blaster Live, are your best bets in this price range.

Your terminiology is a bit confusing. As far as I know there is no such thing as a "MIDI drive." Virtually all synthesizers and samplers these days create and/or respond to MIDI messages and can be collectively called MIDI instruments. Then there are MIDI interfaces, which allow you to get MIDI data into a computer.

The sound cards mentioned above have both an on-board MIDI synth/sampler engine (in other words, sounds you can trigger with MIDI messages) and a MIDI interface (so you can connect a keyboard controller to send the MIDI messages, or send MIDI messages to an external synth).
 
thats what i ment,

how much are thoose sound cards u mentioned...???
 
Well- ~$29 will get you a softsynth that will utilize the audio out on any soundcard and emulate a "hard" MIDI synthesizer. I'm talking about the Roland Virtual Canvas. But a MIDI interface, as AlChuck pointed out, is a different animal. Theoretically any joystick port and the appropriate software could serve as a MIDI interface, but I've never seen this done except with the joystick port on a soundcard like the ones AlChuck mentioned.
 
There are also some MIDI interfaces that use a parallel or serial port, and newer ones use USB ports too. But I think the cheapest of these are at least $50, and they are MIDI interfaces only.

For MIDI synths, softsynths are becoming a much more viable option all the time as processor power and data bus speeds improve... with DirectX version 8, the standard Windows plug-in architecture offers support for plug-in synths with very low latency. SONAR from Cakewalk is, I believe, the first product on the market to support the new WDM driver architecture to achieve thes performance increases. But now we're talking way more than $50.
 
I'm just looking for a soundcard with midi to hook my drum machine and keyboard into,.,,
 
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