Soundcard Buying Advice...

[jeffdennis]

Hi everyone. I am in the market for a PCI soundcard in the $150-250 price range, and I need a bit of advice. Me and a friend of mine have been writing songs as of late and we would like to lay them down. We will be doing this track by track, so I guess I don't need that many inputs. In fact, if we did decide to record live, I suppose we would run the mics and guitars into my Behringer Eurorack MX 602A mixer and then go from the main outs there to the soundcard's input. So in other words, live recordings wouldn't need to be edited, they would just be used for capturing creative ideas. We will probably be using Fruityloops for our drum tracks (new to this, so if someone could suggest something better, I’m all ears), but a real drumkit mic’d out may be in the plans for the future.

I’m not dead set on a PCI card, but I’ve had bad experiences with my brother’s Mackie Spike setup, which is a USB external device. It seemed to have huge problems with latency, and the device itself sometimes had to be unplugged and plugged back in to work right. I’m not sure if all external devices using USB have latency problems and/or are buggy, but this has made me shy away from those types of devices.

I’ve been looking at a few cards on musiciansfriend.com and have had my eye on the M-Audio Delta 1010 LT. Looks like a nice card, but I think it has way more inputs than I would ever need. Another one I’ve looked at is the E-MU 0404. Am I on the right track here? All in all, quality is the most important thing. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[TimOBrien]

Good guide and recomendations:

http://www.tweakheadz.com/soundcards_for_the_home_studio.htm

Personally, I'd go PCI or Firewire... USB seems to have too many problems.
On the low end, you probably can't go wrong with an Emu404, M-Audio Audiophile or an Echo Mia (great card- used one for 3 years) BUT:

#1 Rule of Recording: "You Will ALWAYS End Up Needing More Input/Output Than You Think You Need."
#2 Rule of Recording: "Buy Cheap, Buy Twice and Waste The First Purchase Dollars"

 

[jeffdennis]

Thanks a lot for the link. Great guide. After doing a bit of reading on the subject I think I have decided on the M-Audion Audiophile 192.

I'm a bit concerned about how to hook everything up with my Behringer MX602A, however. It doesn't have the ALT 3-4 output option, so I'm assuming here is how I would set it up:

L/R Main Outs > Audiophile analog input (using a stereo to mono cable?)
Audiophile analog out > to L/R inputs on Line In 5/6 (again using stereo to mono cable?)
Control Room L/R > L/R active monitor

I guess I'm correct in assuming I will not be able to monitor the mix at the mixer itself. Not sure how big of a deal this is, but for now it doesn't seem like much of a concern. I also assume that Line 5/6 will sit at the 12 o' clock position while I use the control room out to control the volume of the monitors.

Not real sure if I'm right about the stereo to mono cables. Also, the MX602A doesn't have balanced outs, so is the fact that the Audiophile has balanced inputs totally pointless?

Here's a link to the MX602A, in case it helps:
http://www.behringer.com/MX602A/index.cfm?lang=ENG

And here's the Audiophile:
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Audiophile192-main.html

 

[Minion]

The way i have it set up Is I have my Mixers Left and Right Record out going into Chanell 1 and 2 of my Sound Card that way I get a stereo Recording and then i Record Bass and Guitar through Input 3 and 4 on my Sound Card (M-Audio Delta 44)....Or I just record My Drum tracks First and then record My guitar and Bass Tracks....And have the Outs from the Sound Card connected to some Powered Speakers for monitoring...

If you have a Controll Room you should Have your Mixer and PC in the Controll Room and that way you will be able to Monitor what is going in the Recording Room through your Monitors and be able to Adjust the Sound on the Mixer without the Sound from the Recording Room Mudying the sound in the Controll room.....

I have everything set up in the Same Room so i had to Record a Bit and then adjust the Mixer and then record and again and then adjust till I got the sound I wanted and then I Marked the settings on the Mixer so I can go back to the Perfect settings again without haveing to go through the Whole Process of mixing the right sound again.....

I can"t really do the Controll room thing because I don"t have the Space and I am the Only one in My Band and I am the Sound engineer also so It would be Pretty Hard to record myself if I had to keep running into the Controll room and press record and then run to the Drums and Play the Beat for the Song LOL....

I"m pretty new to this so I"m sure someone might come up with a better setup for you.....

Cheers