New PC

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mark0429

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Im in the process of building a new pc which I plan on using for a little bit of audio recording, but also for gaming. base specs are as follows:

DFI Lanparty Pro875b Mobo
P4 prescott 3.0ghz
1gb CORSAIR XMS Xtreme Memory Speed Series
Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB 10,000RPM SATA(primary)
Seagate 160GB Barracuda 7200(storage)
eVGA nVIDIA GeForce 6800GT Video Card

My problem is with a soundcard. In my current pc i have an audigy 2 platinum which i love. Id like to get something with good 6 channel audio so i can still use my current speakers, but i also would like to have the multi-track recording features of the audiophile 2496. Is there anyway I could use these in the same system? My band currently has a Behringer Eurorack UB2442FX-Pro mixer and being able to record multiple tracks at the same time would be a huge plus.

thanks for any input
 
The audiophile will only record 2 tracks at once.
A delta 44 will do 5 tracks - $150
A delta 1010lt will do 8 tracks - $220.

By 6-channel audio you mean surround? None of those card above do that
 
I know the M-audio cards wont do surround output. thats why i was wondering if i could have an audigy 2 and say a delta 44 for instance
 
mark. i'm a puter engr. you could try mixing the two.
some people have got that to work i believe.
but really you should come to a hard and fast decision imho.
a kick ass daw or a gaming machine.
the problem is the creative cards load up on your system
so much "stuff".
people run into problems because they stuff too many devices
into the pci slots thus leading to bus contention. ive seen it a thousand times. if you MUST use it as a gaming machine as well i would suggest
from what ive heard matrox pci fancy vid cards are well behaved while the pci audio card is doing its thing.
the problem is that sometimes the fancy gaming pci card can interrupt
the activity of the audio card. matrox seems to be good at not doing this i understand.
if it were me, as an alternative i would look at a kick ass daw based around an amd 64 maybe. or a high end athlon will save you money if you shop around. but the intel will do a good job as well.
you should at least run in depth dsp tests (which is what audio is all about)
between the amd and intel. i think you might be surprised by the results.
it would help to know the max number of tracks you want this system to perform.
 
also if you want multitrack software suggestions.mics, spkrs,mixer etc search under my name. loads of posts in the past year.
 
Sure ... you can have both cards in there, just try and get them to where they don't share an IRQ by trying different PCI slots.
Set Windows up to use the Audigy and your recording software to use whatever other card you choose.
I have a similar setup as you are considering P4 3.0 Prescott on an Abit IC7-G MaxII, though I'm using an ATI 9600pro 256Meg video card.
The Abit board has on-board 6 channel audio (not the greatest by any means) that serves perfectly fine for games, DVD's and such. However my audio interface is a MOTU 828mkII which is run from the on-board FireWire controller (which is still on the PCI bus, just not in the form of an add on card).
My point being, yeah ... you can still have your surround sound card and your recording card. Even if they do end up sharing an IRQ, you can always disable the Audigy while doing DAW work if it ends up being a problem.
 
with respect crankz i'm glad it works great for you, and in the hands
of knowledgeable computer users on many configurations it will.
but ive seen hellish problems for some people who are new to all this and willy nilly fill up their pci slots with all sorts of junk leaving the sound card to pant for breath in laymans terms.
with respect high traffic levels on the pci bus can lead to lots of problems.
as i say it might work for you , but not for lots of others due to the many diffrent pc configns out there and proliferation of motherboards.
 
Thanks for all the responses. Im planning on only having the 2 soundcards in the pci slots as to keep it un-cluttered. One more question i have is, if i use the Cubasis VST software that is bundled with the audigy (and i am somewhat familiar with), will the delta 44 automatically record to 4 different tracks in cubasis?


thanks again.
 
mark0429 said:
..... will the delta 44 automatically record to 4 different tracks in cubasis?
Click to expand...

Well not so much automatically ..... you will have to select the delta's drivers within Cubasis and setup your inputs and outputs for that card. Then it will be as you are familiar with in regard to assigning inputs/outputs to the various tracks.
 
i dont know about cubasis. i think it will. just give it a try.
sometimes software included with sound cards has some features that have been limited for marketing reasons. so you have to pay an upgrade price
to get the full feature set.
but you could try what i use, which i love (powertracks 49 bucks from pgmusic.com).
or some other recommendations are n track, and multitrackstudio.com.
all the foregoing are very good and cheap. and i like them all.
also you dont have limitations. n track is unlimited tracks. powertracks is 48 max but you could mix to stereo and add another 46. it has better midi features and audio editing than the others as you will see if you try the demo. while multitrackstudio has unlimited audio tracks as far as i can see.
 
i dont know about cubasis. i think it will. just give it a try.
sometimes software included with sound cards has some features that have been limited for marketing reasons. so you have to pay an upgrade price
to get the full feature set.
but you could try what i use, which i love (powertracks 49 bucks from pgmusic.com).
or some other recommendations are n track, and multitrackstudio.com.
all the foregoing are very good and cheap. and i like them all.
also you dont have limitations. n track is unlimited tracks. powertracks is 48 max but you could mix to stereo and add another 46. it has better midi features and audio editing than the others as you will see if you try the demo. while multitrackstudio has unlimited audio tracks as far as i can see.
 
manning1 said:
with respect crankz i'm glad it works great for you, and in the hands
of knowledgeable computer users on many configurations it will.
but ive seen hellish problems for some people who are new to all this and willy nilly fill up their pci slots with all sorts of junk leaving the sound card to pant for breath in laymans terms.
with respect high traffic levels on the pci bus can lead to lots of problems.
as i say it might work for you , but not for lots of others due to the many diffrent pc configns out there and proliferation of motherboards.
Click to expand...

I'm doing basically this same thing on my notebook, between my onboard audio and my Motu 828mkII. It works, but it is a major pain in the ass. In Sonar I've had major problems with the Recording Timing Master setting itself to the onboard device while it tries to record from the Motu. Result is stuttering, "slow-motion" audio.

If at all possible, try and keep only one audio device active in your DAW machine. Honestly, the surround sound gaming thing is really overblown. For a long time I was just on stereo sound, and then I went to 4.1 surround and thought it was the best thing in the world. Then I went back to plain old stereo with really good monitors and realized that I wasn't missing the surround at all...
 
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