Replacing Old Sound Card w/ Audio Interface advice needed

[BroKen_H]

Cakewalk used to use (when I used it years ago) different audio outs/midi outs on different channels. You set up your channels in the options menu somewhere. When you played through your Audigy originally, it was set to the Audigy playback device for midi (say device 1). If you changed devices and didn't change the playback device (per track) to the new playback device (say possibly set up as device 2), your audio will not be produced. Hope this helps.

This is quite a nice feature as you can send different sounds to different devices (i.e. some to the sound card, some to a keyboard or two, some to a sound module, mix the sounds the way you like them and then go play live with a band in a computer... (I used to use SB cards for the midi as well) but now use my firewire device for all input/output, but don't use midi. M-Audio Firewire Studio btw. Rock solid. Highly recommended (If you DON'T need midi).

 

[ecc83]

Now, I don't pretend to understand everything that is going on here but I have "sort of" been down this route before.

Many years ago I had a PC with SoundBlaster card (big black edge conn' ASA? ) and I thought it was ***t'ot , it wasn't but it DID have a built in synth or sound generator which was not bad. I dare say modern SB cards have even better generators in them?

Whatever, I went XP IDE and fitted an M-Audio 2496 and revelled in the solid drivers and blinding latency...But I lost my sounds! (well, Son did.) There is however Win Wavetable synth. Pretty ropey sounds but my son could use those then look on the web for better samples and trigger those with the MIDI data.
Then I bought an Evolution EKeys 49 kbd which has a neat little sampler in it which gave us piano and drums.

I bought Sonar/cakewalk Essx1 and son quite liked it but I could never get on. We now have Cubase LE6 on W7/64 and that, with Halion is the dogs whatsits for MIDI work.

There is no better AI for latency for the money than the NI KA6. It also has MIDI* 4 track capabilty and S/PDIF.

Err? Did someone mention running 24/96k? 44.1kHz really is all you need and if all the sounds are "in the box" not a lot of point in 24bits!

*It is the height of Sgroogism to leave MIDI off an AI. Always get one with it, you never know when you might need it!

Dave.