i need some advice...soundblaster live platinum VS. event darla???

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signal2112

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just want to know if the sound blaster live platinum can be taken seriously as a possible candidate for a home recording sound card.
most of the stuff i've read from the net leads me to belive that its primarily thought of as a "gamers" card or for teenage mp3 finatics.
i don't care much about the in's and out's, becouse it's only me recording, and only one instrement at one time. also the soft ware that comes with it.( i'm content with good ole' easy to use n-track!! i just care about sound recording ability, signal to noise ratio...ect.
the "live drive" really brought this cards appeal into veiw for me. (i know the farther away from the computer, the beter the noise reduction.) does that have much to do in this case?
i like how it fits nice and snugg into a drive bay, as opposed to the darla's breakout box that seems awkward at best.

I have a friend who does recording all the time and knows his stuff. he spent $300 or so
on the famed event darly card, after tons of good reveiws in it's favor. he was less than impressed with it's proformance and actually
perfered his $90-$100 sound blaster live.
he said he got a better signal to noise ratio
and over all better sound????? I take his word as fact, he's been at pc digital recording for a while.

all in all does the sound blaster live compare to the darla in raw sound recording ability???
is there a "dramatic" differance between the two in this area?

i'm new to this bb and glad i found it!!!

thanks guys.


also does 24 bit recording make much of a differance than recording 16 bit?
 
I can't believe that there wasn't some other problem going on when your friend claimed that the SB card was quieter than Darla.
Gina is very similar and she's a whole lot quieter than any SB (analog, anyway)
I've heard.
As to 16 vs. 24:
I'd sort out your noise floor problem first because 24 bits will only enhance the detail of the noise differences between the cards.
 
I also find it hard to believe that a sound blaster would out perform a darla. I own one and compared it with my friends sound blaster live in the end there was no comparison...darla won hands down. if you are only mixing down on a computer and have a dig. workstation like a VS with a light pipe I would go fot the cheaper soundblaster platinum otherwize spend the extra cash and go for the darla...its a worth the investment.
 
I use a Sound Blaster Live for MIDI only. go with the Darla (or something equivalent) for digital audio.
 
I have 2 SBLives in separate machines, and both have extremely noisy analog I/O. Sounds like a plane taking off in the background when I use headphones. Ok, so it's not THAT bad, but in my opinion it's bad enough to make the analog I/O unusable for recording. However, I love the cards for gaming and everything else. I also use the SPDIF I/O that I have on one of the cards for connection to my VS880, so what druid said works great. Otherwise, I think you should at least look around at other stuff before making a decision. Gadget Labs and Midiman both make cards in that price range that are at least worth a look.

I have never used the Live Drive that comes with the Platinum version, so maybe those are much improved connection wise over the standard connections right on the back of the card. That might be what your friend is talking about.
 
As an aside to those of you getting lots of noise on your sound-cards, check to see if your CD is connected to your card. If so, mute the CD input through Windows and see if a lot of that noise goes away. You may be blaming the wrong piece of equipment for the noise.
 
thanks for your replies.
in hindsight i baybe should have thrown in another aspect to my question. I have an isa soundblaster 16 and wonder if it would be a big enough jump in recording quality going with a sound blaster live/platinum?

also i saw another card that sparked my intrest....the midi man delta66.
wow does anyone really need a 24 bit 96khz(think thats right?) recording capibility? how does this card stack up in sound quality compaired with the event electronics gina? never heard of the company... midiman??

thanks guys....
 
pglewis, that's a good tip on the CD connection. I don't have the CD drives connected to any of my soundcards because of what you mentioned. I connect as little as I have to in order to keep from complicating the signal chain and what might add noise. I'm probably overly sensitive to noise in recordings, but I still think the SBLive isn't the best choice for recording through the analog connections. Especially for the price of that Platinum with the Live Drive.

signal2112, I think if you are going to spend the money on a SBLive Platinum, read some of the other posts in this forum for ideas on other soundcard in that price range. Have you tried to record with the SB16? You would probably get a better sound with the SBlive series, but I'm not sure enough to justify the price when you could get a card designed more for recording for about the same cost. I've heard good things about the Midiman Delta cards, along with the Gadget Labs and the Echo (gina, darla) stuff, but have never used any of them. I think the Delta series is relatively new, but Midiman has been around a while with other products.

If you are wanting to know why/if anyone needs 24bit/96kHz recording capability, do a search for it here on the BBS. I bet sonusman alone has 20 posts on why it's normally best to get as high definition as you can in digital recording, especially when applying effects in software. The main idea is, you're trying to get bits (0s and 1s) to capture an analog sound wave and then reproduce that wave through a speaker of some kind. An analog wave is continuous, digital recreates that by storing bits as either on and off in a sequence. The more bits you have to represent that wave the more it's going to resemble the analog, and the more natural it will sound. Think of a picture of the waveform... take a pencil and draw it with a continuous motion. Then try to duplicate that waveform you just drew by using the pencil to place little dots close together, one dot at a time. The more dots you have, the more it looks like the original continuous line waveform.
 
thank you for the tips...the cd volume thing,
i never thought of that?
i have done recording with my old isa soundblaster and have gotten good results.
with digital pc recording, i have begun to notice that regardless of the soundcard you are using, getting a good recording plays a lot on the different tricks you pick up on your way around the learning curve.....


i've come a long way on my isa soundblaster.
 
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