Sound Card with at least 1 analog input for guitar & micro, midi in/out

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wonderman

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Hi all,

I really need a good sound card to replace my old Sound Blaster Live Platinium 5.1 (running, of course, on kx project drivers).

My budget is getting some good card for no more than 100€ (well, actually it can be a little higher than that value).

Here´s my pc specs:

Hardware:
box: ANTEC THREE HUNDRED;
power supply: LC POWER LC6600T V2.3 Titan II - Pro-Line Series;
motherboard: ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO;
processor: QuadCore AMD Phenom II X4 Black Edition 955, 3200 MHz (16 x 200);
ram: 12Gb 10666 DDR3 - 1333MhZ
hard-drive 1: SATA II Seagate Barracuda 7200.12RPM - 320 GB (buffer 16Mb; 300Mb/s)
hard-drive 2: SATA II Seagate Barracuda 7200.12RPM - 500 GB (buffer 16Mb; 300Mb/s)
hard-drive 3: SATA (133) Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 120GB (buffer 8Mb; 150Mb/s)
graphics card: ASUS ATI HD5670 HDMI 1GB DDR5 PCI-E - EAH5670/DI/1GD5

Software:
Running on Windows 7 64 bit OS

So, I really want a decent sound card, with a good output sound, and with the possibility to connect a guitar, or micro (xlr is not a priority, micro can be connected with a jack also), and with midi in/out. I also need phones output.

The pci cards i´ve seen don´t have what i liked so much in this soundblaster - the front panel in the CD/DVD slot of the pc box! Please notice that this soundblaster, running on kx project drivers, is a powerful unit, with good output sound, and all the things I needed - but the 64bit is alpha drivers, and I´ve started to have lots of problems, but... maybe this card is so old (it have 11 years!) it can´t take no more! :)

Anyway, the usb cards have what i need (like alesis io2), but i´m afraid it will give me problems having latency for mor than 10ms or something, because it´s a USB drive unit, am I right?

I can have pci express also on my board, but will it give me any advantage? I will only record one (or 2 maybe, if i have more input channels on my sound card) track at a time...


Another question about USB or PCI, is this: will it be any difference on processing a multitrack project on some DAW software, or it´s a task for CPU only? imagine a project with 10 or more tracks. Will it be any difference between USB or PCI?
 
I've never tried PCI, but USB is pretty reliable. You probably also want XLR, as the quality is much higher. Do you need phantom power?

At 100 euro it's pretty hard to find a "good" audio interface with MIDI I/O. At that price, I'd say get a sold audio interface and buy the MIDI interface Separately (only about $30). The closest you'll get is like the Tascam Us144MkII.

If you REALLY don't need XLR you could try the Roland Duo Capture. I haven't heard much about this one though...
 
So, I believe I will choose Tascam US122MKII, 122 and not 144 (144 is more expensive, and the difference between the 2 units don´t justify, to me).

The only concern I have is some people on the internet complaining about some issues with this unit and Windows 7 64Bit, i think there is some kind of problem with the unit and this O.S., anyway I always ask if the users of those units have both software and firmware updated to the last version of drivers, available at tascam website.

What do you think about it?
 
wonderman said:
Another question about USB or PCI, is this: will it be any difference on processing a multitrack project on some DAW software, or it´s a task for CPU only? imagine a project with 10 or more tracks. Will it be any difference between USB or PCI?
Click to expand...

The ability to playback 10+ tracks and effects is largely down to the computer processing power.

The ability to record and playback with low latency is largely down to the audio hardware drivers.
 
Yeah, you are totally right, presonus audiobox also have midi in and out. Actually, I just skipped this unit, I didn´t knew it was that cheaper, and that had midi! Maybe it´s less problematic than Tascam, will it be?
 
Sorry, I don't know. I've had nothing but perfect success with presonus interfaces in the past, but I've never used win7 64bit.
 
Actually, there´s something that is bothering me...
The Presonus is somehow too "hot" in inputs, at least it´s what i´ve been reading about it. I´ll plug my guitar directly, so I believe it can be a problem...
 
So, I´ve bought Tascam US122MKII

This audio interface is VERY good! The sound quality, the recording quality, everything is very cool, for a cheap audio interface like this one. The only problem is what some other users are reporting, that solves automatically just plugging out and in USB of audio interface (as annoying as it is, of course...).
 
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