Some newbie-ish (but detailed) soundcard questions...

[Tazer79]

Hey all -

I'm looking into buying a Line 6 or J-Station for direct recording. I'm absolutely blown away by the ease of use, versatility, etc...

So anyway, I'd like to have a soundcard that can produce decent-sounding backing midi tracks to go along with my recordings. I currently have an old SB Pro (16 or 32 bit), and the midi sounds somewhat artificial. I always thought "well, midi always sounds artificial," but then I heard some midi drums on my friend's computer, and they sounded much better...Much more life-like. I think the difference is he had a newer soundcard.

So anyhow, I recently acquired a Soundblaster AWE 64 from my friend. Would using this card improve the sound of my midi? Is the 64 vs 32 bits what accounts for the better midi sounds?

Also, another friend just gave me a Midiman "DMAN" soundcard. Its a bit newer, definitely higher quality, (gold-plated connectors), and also has "built-in 64-voice general midi wavetable systhesis..." It also has two pairs of RCA jacks for line-in and line-out. I assume the "64-voice" thing means its midi sounds the same as the AWE 64's?

Could I just use the midiman instead of either soundblaster card, and use it for all my normal computer sound applications (listening to MP3's, games, etc)? If this is the case, I notice that I won't be able to hook use my computer speakers (with one 1/8 plug that normally goes into soundcards) with the RCA outputs on the Midiman. In there some adaptor I can get to solve that problem?

Whoooo. Thanks for reading all that, and thanks in advance for your help. Hope that all made sense.

 

[j]

check this out: http://www.line6.com/guitarport/Tour-1/tour-1.html

this hasn't been released yet, but if it does what it says it will do..it will enable you to record 24 bit processed guitar tracks straight to disk...i plan to get one of these as soon as they are released...i can let you know if it lives up to the hype...otherwise pod is cool but extra stages of analog to digital to analog...j station has the digital input...i haven't tried the j-station, but i'm sure it is usable.

midi isn't necessarily artificial...typically midi sounds artificial due to the sequencing rather than the sound sources, i.e., soundcard or whatever sound module.

 

[tdukex]

Here's what I do. I have the Dman's bigger brother, the Dman 2044. I run two cards, the Dman for digital audio and a Soundblaster Live Value ($35) for MIDI.

The Dman will serve you well for digital audio, but I doubt the built-in wave table will sound all that great.

The beauty of the SB Live Value is that it has a built in EMU sampler and has Sound Font capability. This means you can buy or download high quality Soundfonts from the web which will improve your MIDI sounds dramatically. And it's only about $35!

Read this about the SB Live and Soundfonts:

http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/files/E5F90F70241EFF6D862566B20024C532

http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/files/E8FC6F1272005BC0862568D700634565

Or, for a little more money, there's the new Audigy:

http://www.ethanwiner.com/audigy.html

 

[tdukex]

Re: Re: Some newbie-ish (but detailed) soundcard questions...

midi isn't necessarily artificial...typically midi sounds artificial due to the sequencing rather than the sound sources.

Actually, the sound source is extremely important. The difference between a standard 4mb or 8mb wave table and a high quality sound font is like the difference between a cheap laminate guitar and a Martin D28.

Ok, maybe that's a stretch But the difference is large.

I do agree that even the best sound source (synth or sound font) will suffer with stiff MIDI sequencing.

 

[j]

but then a great drummer can make the cheap guitar sound better than the Martin with a sucky drummer....it's all relative...in an absolute sense..

 

[AlChuck]

Don't bother with the AWE, it was an OK card for its day, but the most space you'll have for Sound Fonts is 28 MB, and that's if you load the card up with the prprietary memory modules it needs, which would cost you more than a brand new Audigy MP3+ or X-Gamer package would. The Live and the Audigy use system RAM for loading Sound Fonts. The AWE is also only sort-of a full-duplex card (full duplex means being able to play prerecorded audio while recording more audio). The AWE can only manage this by playing back the prerecorded stuff at 12-bit while you record, so it sounds dreadful while you overdub. There will also never be WDM drivers written for it, I'll bet.