Ideal Sound Card for Cakewalk

[bgavin]

Is there an "ideal" sound card that works especially well with Sonar?

The intended use is home or on-location recording of performers, either singly or as a group.

I'm looking for education on multiple input cards, such as using them to record multiple, simultaneous tracks for later mixing. Sorry about the newbie questions, but after all these years of playing, I don't know squat about the recording end.

 

[moskus]

Click here for a list of soundcards, compiled by Cakewalk.

This list is a resource for both authorized Cakewalk resellers and Cakewalk customers. It allows you to quickly compare the features of a number of different audio cards, making your hardware decision that much easier.

But I use a card that I'm very happy with. The Audiotrak INCA88 gives me 8 ins and 8 outs, low latency (1,5 ms using WDM, I run it stable with many tracks and effects at 4.4 ms), 2 digital outs (spdif: optical and coaxial, but no digital in ), 2 headphone amps, 2 mic amps (with phantom power), has WDM, MME, DirectSound, ASIO 2.0 and GSIF-drivers. It does what I want and does it good...

 

[dachay2tnr]

Just as a further comment, the choice of sound card should probably be made more on the basis of your mobo and OS, rather than recording program - although it's good to check them all.

The key thing with Sonar is its ability to use WDM drivers. Therefore you want to be sure to get a sound card that has workable WDM drivers for the OS you are using.

 

[moskus]

Good points, dachay, but I would do it the other way around. First check if it works with Cakewalk progs (does it have WDM-drivers), and then check it it's compatible with my hardware.
But that's just me.

But of course, first of all I would check what soundcards give me what I want and for what price! That's the most critical point IMHO.

 

[ChuckU]

Two cards that Cakewalk does demos with - should be endorsement enough:
Delta 1010 (I have one and it rocks).
Frontier Tango.

 

[natpub]

Aardvark Q10, the specs are a tad different from the 1010, but quite frankly, it blows the 1010 away and has far more features. Their A/WDM drivers allow better latency specs, their micpres are nice and transparent for most common uses, and the card shielding makes a noticable difference.

I went back and forth between the 1010 and Q10 for weeks, even months. In the end, I am glad I did what I did.

 

[brzilian]

Aardvark Q10, the specs are a tad different from the 1010, but quite frankly, it blows the 1010 away and has far more features. Their A/WDM drivers allow better latency specs, their micpres are nice and transparent for most common uses, and the card shielding makes a noticable difference.

I went back and forth between the 1010 and Q10 for weeks, even months. In the end, I am glad I did what I did.

Gonna dissagree with you. I've been screwed over by companies that take as long as Aardvark did to release working WDM drivers for 2000 and XP. Aardvark users were left out in the cold for close to a year waiting for these drivers.

I have read posts over on Audioforums.com stating that these A/WDM drivers are far from bug free and actually have some serious flaws.

 

[ChuckU]

Natpub, how much is Aardvark paying you?

 

[natpub]

Haha, i want em to gimme another one free if peeps think I work for em!!

i couldnt speak to the wait on the XP drivers since they were already out when i got mine, shrug. Yeah, i read about some ongoing driver bugs, the main one being that media players like Real and WMP take forever to load and play a file.

Aardvark is supposed to have a fix out soon. Another one is that, apparently for the same reason, it locks and crashes when I try to use it to play Everquest, LOL! I am hoping this next patch repairs that also=)

For my needs though, the Q10 works much better than the 1010. I may have been a bit strong on sayin it "blows it away" but i still prefer the overall sound, functionality, and ubiquity in multiple situations. The 1010 is a very quiet unit and is nice if you also plan to buy a lot of pre's or use a mix board. For me, I wanted the mixer out of the chain, they are just too noisy unless you are rich and have a mega nice board.

If all i was doing was straight up recording of my band, i would probably have gone a different way, but I needed many different tasks done with one unit.