soundcard help, pls!

  • Thread starter Thread starter megamind
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megamind

New member
Hi,
I´m not only new to this forum/comunity but also to homrecording in general, so please bare with me!
In general I need to record Electric guitars(mostly direct through my Boogie markIV), acoustic guitars and vocals through mics.

To be well prepared for homerecording i´m going to buy a new PC(Pentium D, 2gigs ram, 500 GB hardis, etc), and the only problem I`ve got is the soundcard.
I don´t know which ones are useful, so there are basically 2 option by the company i buy this PC:
1.)"Sound Blaster® Audigy™ 2 ZS, PCI w/Dolby Digital, 7.1 speaker support & IEEE1394"
2.)"Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music card,PCI w/Dolby Digital,7.1 speaker surround and THX certification"

Which one is better for Homerecording, or are they both crap?
How about the M-Audio Delta 1010LT?
Any other suggestions?
I don´t need the sound to be perfect, but I used to record directly from my V-amp into the stock soundcard of my PC, and only to record certain ideas.
Now I want to record whole songs and be able to fiddle with ideas within a song and to get dynamic, clear and understanable results recording them.

Any help is greatly appreciated.
Like I said, it doesnt have to be perfect, so the max i wanna pay is about 300-400 euro/dollar.

thanks a lot in advance,
meg
 
Seconded, and anything by M-audio is pretty solid. If you've got firewire, you might look into getting an M-audio 410 (I think you can get one for about $250). The 1010 is a very solid PCI card though.

That being said, I've got a 2496 Audiophile AND a Sound Blaster Live inside mine (I'm also a gamer).

PS - I wouldn't recommend trying to juggle two soundcards inside one computer to ANYONE. I really should have a different computer for recording from my gaming computer.
 
I am also a gamer. I went with an audiophile2496. I figure that any soundcard good for recording will be decent for gaming, but the converse doesn't work as well. ("Decent" is rarely good enough for recording.)
 
Justus Johnston said:
Seconded, and anything by M-audio is pretty solid. If you've got firewire, you might look into getting an M-audio 410 (I think you can get one for about $250). The 1010 is a very solid PCI card though.
Click to expand...

I'm about to sell my 1010LT, and even knowing that this comment might reduce the resale value, I'd still recommend against it. The FireWire 410 is a much better long-term investment, as is anything FireWire.

PCI is a dying standard, being gradually superseded by PCI Express (PCIe) over the next handful of years. PCIe is not compatible with existing PCI cards. Thus, you would be wise to limit your spending on PCI cards and purchase alternatives whenever possible. I wouldn't spend more than about $100 on any PCI card, no matter how good, as I view PCI devices as sort-of a throwaway investment, IMHO.
 
thank you all for the input, tips and recomendations!

you really helped a lot!
meg
 
If you're going to go firewire in that budget I would personally take a good look at the presonus firebox. 2 preamps plus 2 additional line ins. Expandable, and it's only $299 US.
 
altitude909 said:
dgatwood:


This is not correct.

PCIe Explained

The big thing about PCIe is a reworking of the whole bus, not just the slot
Click to expand...

Ars is completely correct, and so am I. PCIe -is- backwards compatible from a software perspective (which is what they are talking about). It is, however, not at all backwards compatible in terms of the physical interconnect used in hardware.

1. Parallel PCI requires more physical data wires than an entire PCI Express connector has on it.
2. The connector is physically different.
3. The circuitry used to drive the bus is different; PCI Express is a serial bus, while PCI is a parallel bus. They don't act at all alike electrically.
4. The pins used for data on PCI are reused for other things in PCI Express, so it isn't even practical to try to design a hybrid slot that does both.

It -is- possible (albeit likely with latency problems) to adapt a PCI card to work on a PCI Express bus with a $2000 Magma chassis. It is also possible to adapt a card containing a PCI-based device chip to work on a PCI Express bus by redesigning the card to contain a PCIe to PCI bridge chip on the front end. Neither of these is something an end user can reasonably afford to do unless you're talking about moving a Digi system over or something.

http://www.apple.com/powermac/pciexpress.html said:
PCI Express slots are not compatible with PCI or PCI-X expansion cards.
Click to expand...
 
I really think you are over stating how long PCI will be around.

The slowest (32/33) pci is still faster than the fastest (FW800) firewire device so untill there is something faster I really dont see it going away. Protools is still pci it probably going to be at least another year untill we see full blown PCIe systems with more than just a PCIe slot for a video card
 
altitude909 said:
I really think you are over stating how long PCI will be around.

The slowest (32/33) pci is still faster than the fastest (FW800) firewire device so untill there is something faster I really dont see it going away. Protools is still pci it probably going to be at least another year untill we see full blown PCIe systems with more than just a PCIe slot for a video card
Click to expand...

I'm already having to buy hardware to replace PCI devices that won't be supported on my next computer. The PowerMac G5 I'm about to order has -only- PCIe slots. So I don't think I'm overstating things at all.
 
That may be true for a mac but seeing that Apple has a 3% percent market share I dont think that is any indication of whats going to happen with the remaining 97% of all computers. Especially since Apple is dumping the G5 and going to Intel hardware next year
 
altitude909 said:
That may be true for a mac but seeing that Apple has a 3% percent market share I dont think that is any indication of whats going to happen with the remaining 97% of all computers. Especially since Apple is dumping the G5 and going to Intel hardware next year
Click to expand...

If history has taught us anything, it is that the industry looks heavily to Apple for a sense of direction. USB was essentially stillborn. Nobody cared. Apple switched. Five years later, PS/2 was basically dead. Apple switched to PCI. Within five years, most of the major vendors had dropped ISA from most of their systems, and ISA was reduced to a handful of specialty motherboards.

Dropping PCI is expected to happen -faster- than PS/2 or ISA. IIRC, statistics show that the average PC has less than one PCI card it. Most people never use the slot in new PCs because so much hardware is integrated on the motherboard.

And unlike PS/2, parallel PCI is a board design nightmare, requiring lots of extra work to actually get it right. (You try running 128 parallel signal lines and getting them all exactly the same length. Oh, and the slot has to be within something like three or four inches of the PCI controller, so it creates a HUGE board design constraint that basically goes away with PCIe.) Thus, board manufacturers are anxious to get rid of PCI, as it significantly increases motherboard design costs with no perceived benefit for most users.

I'm not saying you won't be able to buy motherboards that support PCI in five years, but they will cost more than PCIe-only motherboards, as they will be considered specialty boards. It will also significantly limit your options.
 
Dgat,

I would say you are overreacting a bit and unfortunately it scares people who are in a pinch and looking for any advice they can on what to buy in what I'd call a pretty confusing soundcard market for new people.

PCI will still be around for awhile, currently the ONLY thing used for PCI-e (pci express) is graphics cards. There isn't even a single pci-e soundcard on the market. The first ones out will probably have a multitude of problems as well.

So you can either go with what works today and will probably be around for 5 years+ or you can get a SLOWER firewire device that will probably still work in 5 years... unless they come out with like firewire 2 and then you are just as screwed as if you owned a pci card and they stopped making motherboards with pci slots.

Also.. there is nothing stopping someone from using the computer they own today with a good pci card and software from running that computer for the next 20 years...

I have computers in my basement from the 80s that still work perfectly fine and still do what they did well back then today.

Do i have all the fancy new features out, etc? naw not really.. but i mean there is PLENTY of stuff you can do with sound/recording with a top end machine today and a pci card that could keep you making music into the next century if you know how to use your tools well.

Now if there were pci-e soundcards out and it was a choice between the new one and a pci... well hell yeah i'd say go with the pci-e. It's like buying a new graphics card now, you aren't going to get an AGP card because AGP is going away.

Just seems a little bit early to jump the gun.
 
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