Montego II soundcard

[smaug73]

Hi people. I am serious guitar player (15 years) looking into recording digitally. It so far has been an ugly experience with my SB awe 32 that is 6 years old. I would like to run my guitar processor into my pc but it sounds just horrible right now. I am on a sub $400 budget and looking for a good card to work with ntrack studio on my system which is 400 mhz with 128 mb of ram.

I was looking at Turtle Beach Montego II sound card and wondering if the Studio version of the card was worth the extra $$$, considering one is $30-35 and the other $150+

 

[AlChuck]

Both the Montego and the SB Live are probably pretty comparable -- pretty OK digital audio, pretty decent synth, downloadable sounds. If your budget is really $400, and you don't need a synth on board, I'd also look at the lower-priced Echo cards. I saw the older 20-bit Darla card on sale somewhere for $199. The audio quality will be much better. Other possibilities are the smaller Delta cards (Delta 44 and Delta 66) from M Audio, the DMan card from Midiman, and the Gadget Labs Wave/424. Good hunting!

 

[Mountaineer]

I started out with the Montego II that came with my PC. All I can say is NOISY ! When you pay the $150 bucks for the Studio version, it's just the same card, but with a digital I/O and some cheap software thrown in . . . Don't Do It ! Is your $400 budget just for a soundcard ? Shop around the forum for soundcard advice . . . look at old posts.You can do a lot better, even for $150 to $300.
Look at Gadget Labs, MidiMan, etc.
Try to get at least 20 bit A/D converters. Most higher end cards are much quieter and will give you better results. Good Luck !

Regards,
PAPicker

PS - Seems that Me and ALChuck were on the same wavelength and only a minute apart !

[This message has been edited by PAPicker (edited 05-01-2000).]

 

[AlChuck]

PAPicker,

I started with a Turtle Beach Monterey that cost over $300 about 6 years back. It had level problems and, when the software and the computer it was in gradually became somewhat capable of recording digital audio, it was almost worthless. To make a long story short, I struggled for a while with a SB AWE64 Gold in a P-200 MMX machine w/64 MB RAM that couldn't handle the data stream, and two months ago got a SB Live! card, which now works pretty well up to five or six tracks if you go easy on the plug-ins and keep your fingers crossed. I moved from a 4-track cassette and to me the Live card sounds terrific by comparison. But I'm about to upgrade the PC to a PIII/600MHz w/256MB RAM and get an Echo Mona or Aardvark Direct Pro or SeaSound Solo EX...