USB/Firewire audio/midi interface to use with looping software

[Laimon]

Hi everybody,

I am planning to buy a not-too-expensive external sound card for a spcific purpose, which I am gonna explain in the following.
I play guitar, and I have been using a lot of different loopers in the years. I don't use them live, only at home as composition tools. Unfortunately, I find that physical loopers have often shortcomings; in particular, I recently turned to a MIDI system in order to control my increasingly complex setup, and restricting the field of viable loopers to those that are midi controllable really narrows down the choice to 3-4 (I am serious!). These are not only expensive, but also often suboptimal, for lack of this or that function.
Then I thought: maybe the solution could be to use some PC looping software (I am leaning towards Ableton Live)! What I need then is an external sound card that can send, via USB or Firewire, audio (input and output) and MIDI (to control it with my pedalboard). I already have an internal sound card (E-MU 1212m PCIe) which has nice AD converters and midi input, but I would need always to unplug one of the speakers to get the return signal, plus I'd have to run a bunch of cables of like 4 meters across the room, so I really prefer to find a decent minimal sound card to place with my equipment and use it only for that.
So now, to the questions:
- what would you guys recommend? I need at least one level input and level output (well, that is quite standard), and MIDI in/out, and I would like actually good converters
- should I go USB or Firewire?
- how long can the cable be before I run into latency problems? I need at least 3 meters...

Looking forward to any suggestion you might have!
Cheers,
Simone

 

[ecc83]

Hi Simone,
Connection is the easy bit, USB all the way. Fussywire is all but dead.

For me there are two contenders separated by price. You mentioned "latency"? Well if you want the fastest, most stable interface you can get under £400. Native Instruments Komplete Audio 6.
Bit of an overkill for connectivity, two mic/line/high Z inputs plus two more line ins plus S/PDIF and of course MIDI!
Price, over here £169 is I think the best I have seen.

Some £50 or so cheaper is the Steinberg UR22. I cannot personally vouch for its latency properties but it was given a good review in Sound on Sound and I have not read a single bad report of the AI. Just two mic/line/hZ ins and MIDI.

Re cable length for USB. 5mtrs is the official limit and most AIs seem ok with that so 3 mtrs should be fine. I cannot recall how long the one is that my Ka6 shipped with but I do know it works fine at 5mtrs with a W7/64 2core AMD 2.7g HP desktop.

Dave.

 

[Laimon]

Thanks a lot for the input Dave!

I checked out the Native Komplete 6, that's pretty cool! And even a bit cheaper here, around 150 pounds (if I convert it)...I'll keep it in mind for when I actually pull the trigger.

Now I should actually try to do some looping using my E-MU 1212m, to see if there is any noticeable latency or frequency loss. Then decide based on that ;-)

 

[ecc83]

Thanks a lot for the input Dave!

I checked out the Native Komplete 6, that's pretty cool! And even a bit cheaper here, around 150 pounds (if I convert it)...I'll keep it in mind for when I actually pull the trigger.

Now I should actually try to do some looping using my E-MU 1212m, to see if there is any noticeable latency or frequency loss. Then decide based on that ;-)

Is that the 121m PCI "EE" or the older PCI card? I ask because I am pretty sure the earlier one does not work well with Win 7?

FYI. My KA6 equals the latency 64samples, of my M-A 2496 cards and my musician son said that was fast enough for him when playing keyboard in Cubase LE6 and he is a fussy sod!

Dave.

 

[Laimon]

It's a PCIe. I actually have no complaints about that, I used it for a few amateur recordings and I like it very much, really nice sounding converters!
What I tried so far was only to send the signal to and back from the PC, and as expected it was flawless...unfortunately I didn't quite manage to do much with Ableton (had never used it before).