Soundcard: Remove or not?

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crisson

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I am just getting starting into recording as a hobby with no professional plans. I have a 3.2GHz Pentium, a 160 Gb hard drive, and 1Gb ram. From reading the posts on the forums, the problem I may have is my soundcard. I have a Soundblaster Live 24. I guess my questions are: 1) will this card even work for digital recording (multitrack, but just one track at a time as I am the whole band), 2) if it is not enough could you suggest a relatively inexpensive card (it is just a hobby), and 3) if I put in a new card, do I need to remove the SB card or can I continue to use it for everyday computer sound?
Thanks.
 
crisson said:
I am just getting starting into recording as a hobby with no professional plans. I have a 3.2GHz Pentium, a 160 Gb hard drive, and 1Gb ram. From reading the posts on the forums, the problem I may have is my soundcard. I have a Soundblaster Live 24. I guess my questions are: 1) will this card even work for digital recording (multitrack, but just one track at a time as I am the whole band),
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It will work, but you may be dissatified with the quality in time.

2) if it is not enough could you suggest a relatively inexpensive card (it is just a hobby),
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Mbox if you want ProTools, or Audiophile 2496 if you're using something else.

3) if I put in a new card, do I need to remove the SB card or can I continue to use it for everyday computer sound?
Thanks.
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You can probably keep it. If you get problems with conflicts, you may have to pull it.
 
there are many usb/firewire soundcards that will give you very decent sound quality for a lower price....such as the

m-audio mobile pre (usb, i have this it is good)
tascam us-122(usb)
Pre-Sonus Inspire (firewire, this one is pretty good i hear)
m-audio solo (firewire)

These are all under 200$ and are pretty decent soundcards for recording. You could use kristal as your software, i have been very impressed with it's capabilities for being free. You can even use 2 VST plugins per track....you can download it here www.kreatives.org/kristal

those are some very cheap options for you that will definitely give you very good results. The m-box is good too, but it is pretty pricey and you said you wanted cheap. hope that helps!

andrew

edit: ps-leave the SB card in, but why would you want to use it for everyday stuff? i am pretty sure the soundcard you are buying would be better even for playing music and stuff like that...
 
A good soundcard guide you should read:

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

Personally, I ran a couple of years with an SBLive in the same machine as an EchoMia. No problems and I used the SBlive mainly for soundfonts. Eventualy I found I could get a BETTER sound for soundfonts by sticking to just the Mia and a soundfont sample player (SFZ, free from rgcaudio.com or Bismark's BS-16) so I pulled the SBLive.
 
I bought a delta 44 from some ebay store for like $150 and it's great. I had some sort of soundblaster 24-bit that had latency problems and it was well worth a buck and a half not to have that problem anymore.
 
astoebe said:
there are many usb/firewire soundcards that will give you very decent sound quality for a lower price....such as the

m-audio mobile pre (usb, i have this it is good)
tascam us-122(usb)
Pre-Sonus Inspire (firewire, this one is pretty good i hear)
m-audio solo (firewire)

These are all under 200$ and are pretty decent soundcards for recording.
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Why would anyone choose firewire or USB over a PCI interface for a desktop PC setup?

If you want to spend as little as possible and only need a couple of inputs my recommendation would be the M Audio Audiophile 2496, very respectable quality for $100.
 
Thanks guys for all the good input. Based on what I have picked up here and on the tweak's guide, I think the best fit for me is a PCI soundcard like the Audiophile 2496. Next question, it seems that all of the inputs to this card hang off of the card which means...difficult to get to in my setup. What would you suggest as a PCI setup with a breakout box (again on the relative cheap...say under $200)?

Thanks again for all the info so far. I am learning here.
 
M Audio delta 44 has a breakout box (2 more analog inputs/outputs as well).

I use a card with no box and to be honest it's no big deal, it's all wired up to my mic preamps which sit on my desktop anyway so all the connecting/disconnecting of mics and instruments takes place there. The delta 44 is only another $50 though so you might as well go for that, and you never know when those 2 extra ins might come in handy.

The only downside is that it has no MIDI in/out and no spdif (digital) unlike the 2496 so if you need that stuff you'll have to think again.
 
Kevin DeSchwazi said:
Why would anyone choose firewire or USB over a PCI interface for a desktop PC setup?

If you want to spend as little as possible and only need a couple of inputs my recommendation would be the M Audio Audiophile 2496, very respectable quality for $100.
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true, sorry...i have a laptop and sometimes just don't hink
 
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