soundcard recommendation

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delraysteve

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I have an XP machine and am using Pro 9. I would like to know if there is a reasonably priced soundcard that will allow me to record 24/96.

I apologize if this has been covered in the past, I am new to the home-recording thing...thanks!
 
This is probably the No1 question posted here;) You can always search these forums using the seach button.
But I would suggest the Audiophile 2496 card from M-audio:

http://www.midiman.net/

You might want to reconsider 96K bit rate. Eats hard disk storage for breakfast. And Lunch. And dinner. And supper. And when you dither down to CD quality at 16 bit, will you notice the difference?;)
 
Soundcard

Thanks Paul, I appreciate the recommendation! Also good point regarding the hard drive resources, I will keep it in mind.
 
Paul881 said:
And when you dither down to CD quality at 16 bit, will you notice the difference?;)
Click to expand...
Paul - sounds like you might be mixing your apples and oranges here. What does dithering down to 16 bits have to do with recording at 96KHz?? I suspect you meant resampling down to 44.1KHz.

If that's the case I agree with you. Record straight on at 44.1.

On the other hand, I would recommend recording at 24 bits and dithering down to 16.
 
Paul - sounds like you might be mixing your apples and oranges here. What does dithering down to 16 bits have to do with recording at 96KHz?? I suspect you meant resampling down to 44.1KHz.
Click to expand...

Guilty as charged:o Another senior moment:rolleyes:
 
SoundSystem DMX 6fire 24/96

Check out these specs! All for $249. Musicians Friends has these.

PCI-board
3 analog stereo outputs (3,5mm jack) - 24 Bit/96 kHz
1 analog stereo input (3,5mm jack) - 24 Bit/96 kHz
2 analog CD-Audio outputs (Molex, On-Board) - 24 Bit/96 kHz
1 analog AUX input (Molex, On-Board) - 24 Bit/96 kHz
1 digital CD-Audio TTL input (Molex, On-Board)
1 analog stereo input (Cinch) on front module - 24 Bit/96 kHz
1 analog stereo output (Cinch) on front module - 24 Bit/96 kHz
1 analog stereo phono (MM, 6 mV ) input (Cinch) on front module- 24 Bit/96 kHz
1 analog mono microphone input (6,3mm jack) on front module - 24 Bit/96 kHz
1 analog stereo headphone output (6,3mm jack) on front module - 24 Bit/96 kHz
1 digital stereo in- and output (TOS-Link, optical) on front module - 24 Bit/96 kHz
1 digital stereo in- and output (Cinch, coaxial) on front module - 24 Bit/96 kHz
1 MIDI in- and output (5-pin DIN) on front module
Control range of : 9mV - 500mV
Output power of headphone output : 60 mW
Bus master transfer supports ‚24bit 4byte mode' (32bit)
Simultaneous recording and reproduction of all channels with up to 24bit/96kHz
24bit/96kHz AD converters with 100 dB dynamical range (S/NR)*
24bit/96kHz DA converters with 110 dB dynamical range (S/NR)*
24bit/96kHz stereo digital input (S/PDIF with up to 24bit/96kHz)
24bit/96kHz stereo digital output (S/PDIF with up to 24bit/96kHz)
Digital input may also be used for digital audio output of an internal CD-Rom drive (TTL)
Input control of AD converters with +18dB increment in 0,5dB steps
Hardware with internal resolution of 36bit
VU-meter in control panel (hardware based)
"None-Audio" mode for transmission of AC3 and DTS streams via digital interface
Connection option for microWAVE PC!, DXR and DXF , alternatively to DMX 6fire 24/96 front module
Software

WDM driver for Windows 98SE/ ME/2000 and Windows XP Supports ASIO 2.0
WDM Kernel Streaming (e.g. for Sonar ™)
MME- and DirectSound
DirectSound 3D, Sensaura 3D, A3D 1.0/2.0 and EAX 1.0/2.0 as well as Macro FX**
ControlPanel for Windows 98SE/ME/2000 and Windows XP
Bundle software

Cyberlink 6-channel PowerDVD.
Algorithmix Sound Laundry TerraTec Edition
Steinberg WaveLab Lite Vers. 2.0
Musicmatch Jukebox
Emagic MicroLogic FUN
System requirements

Pentium II 450 or higher
VGA graphic card, 800x600 / 256 colours
128 MB RAM
Windows 98SE/ME/2000 or Windows XP
Recommended

Intel Pentium III 1 GHz, Celeron 900 MHz or AMD K7 Athlon 1 GHz
ULTRA DMA or SCSI Controller
VGA graphic card, 1024x768 / HiColor
256 MB RAM
*) These specifications refer to technical data of used converters.
**) Powered by Sensaura®.
 
soundcard

celestmark, wow...those are quite an impressive list of specs. Curious if you have used this product and does it do what it says it does.

Also, (for the rest of you nice folks out there) since the recommendation for an inexpensive board was an Audiophile 24/96, what about a really good soundcard and is there really a significant difference in quality? And on a side note has anyone looked at the new Audigy2?

Thanks!
 
Do not touch the Audigy. Its for gamers, not serious musicians.

There are many other more extensive and expensive soundcards. Bigger ones in the M-audio range, MOTU racks, Echo range etc. are all viable alternatives.

I will leave others to post if there is any discernable difference in sound quality. I guess it will be down to the A/D converters that each of them use.
 
It depends on what you need. Multiple in/outs, low latency, 24bit/96kHz, soundfont support, and so on...

If you just want a good, basic soundcard, nothing beats the Audiophile 2496 (IMHO)...
 
How's the latency of that audiophile card? I have a Soundblaster Audigy card and with a latency of 70ms on DxI plugins I sometimes wonder whether it could be worthwile to switch to another card (with a much lower latency of course) in combination with a plugin like SoftSynthPro for the soundfonts...
 
DMX 6FIRE 24/96 -

I also use this with the boss break out box. I tried the maudio 24/48 card and immediately ran into driver trouble. They gave no support and what it came down to was finding the one and only compatible pci slot that my pc could assign an independent IRQ to. This is common with soundcards, but some are more freindly than others. I was unable to find a slot and configure my bios to force IRQ without compomising some other features on my system. Anyway, I had really wanted the 6fire and although pci slot did matter, my bios and os were able to separate it on a single IRQ without any fussing with settings. It installed well and sounds very good. The options are very musician freindly and it covers all the required I/O needs for dig in/out ( full duplex ). I recommend it and as a side note - the chip is identical to the one used in m-audio, so you have m-audio guts with german ingenuity.


Oh, if you really want a great card, get the hammerfall.
 
maudio duo

I was going to get the Audiophile 24/96 and then I saw the MAudio Duo. Looks pretty neat, nice interface. Anyone with experience with that or should I just stick to the Audiophile 24/96?
 
dachay2tnr said:
Paul - sounds like you might be mixing your apples and oranges here. What does dithering down to 16 bits have to do with recording at 96KHz?? I suspect you meant resampling down to 44.1KHz.

If that's the case I agree with you. Record straight on at 44.1.

On the other hand, I would recommend recording at 24 bits and dithering down to 16.
Click to expand...

why? it's the exact same thing: the extra 8 bits get thrown away when anyone hears the song because the best you'll do for general distribution is 44.1/16bit.

going to anything higher just eats up massive resources with no benefit. just going to 24bit vs 16it, all your audio is now 50% larger on your disk. and going to 96k, the audio is over 2x larger. combine the two and that's a huge waste of disk space. plus, since the pc has to do so much more disk i/o, i can't run as many tracks of audio, or plugins, or dxi/vsti instruments.

and what happens in the end anyway? somebody rips it to mp3/128bit rate.

the whole 24/96 thing just feels like sham by hardware mfgs to rape a few more bucks out of us. and what's next, a 32/192 spec? what for? human hearing doesn't even go to the 20k that 44.1 gives us.

i'll agree with you on one point, if there's anything that could improve quality of cd's is a higher bit rate. too many people complain that vinly sounds warmer than digital cd's and the cause is the 16 bit length of samples. when a standard format appears (and it might be dvd audio) that's distributed in place of the conventional cd's then it might be worth going over to it. but not now. when serial-ATA hard drives appear and cpu speeds go over 5ghz, then i'll think about it.
 
flogger said:
.
the whole 24/96 thing just feels like sham by hardware mfgs to rape a few more bucks out of us. and what's next, a 32/192 spec? what for? human hearing doesn't even go to the 20k that 44.1 gives us.
Click to expand...

I can understand why you would say that but the fact is that, with the greatest respect, many people with far better ears than you or I "know" that the quality of the audio is better recorded at 24bits and then dithered down to 16 bits than recording at 16 bits in the first place. In many ways it is illogical, and I have had my engineering friends explain this to me many times over and I still remain very sceptical but accede to their greater knowledge and skill.
I haven't done so myself but using something like Wavelab, it would be easy to do a comparison waveform check, A/B'ing the results. And in the arguements I have read, people who have carried out similar checks reckon that the results confirm the listening test.

This has been the subject to many, many philosophical arguements on the Recording Techniques forum on HoRec. You might like to do a search on this subject and read the threads.;)
 
soundcard

Thanks to everyone for your help with this. I picked up an Audiophile 24/96 and an AudioBuddy. It sounds great!
 
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