which soundcard should I use?

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newbie00

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I haven't bought my cakewalk software yet but I think I will soon. I have very little home recording knowledge but I'm starting to learn. What soundcards are good for simple recording with cakewalk? I only have old fashioned acoustic and electric instruments, no midi for me. All I need is one analog input for a mic and 2 outputs, daz it, but I want a good sample rate (eg 44.1khz) at an affordable price. I don't need a million I/O ports with fiberoptics and shit like that. ANY SUGGESTIONS? Am I even choosing the appropriate software?
 
I agree. Do you already have a soundcard? It may be sufficient for what you're looking for. Check here.
 
I have the soundblaster live UART card. My wave check found it to be only a 16 bit card. Is that right? Ssheesh, I just had my computer built three months ago with intentions of it being a super media system. I have 256RAM with three slots open next to it for a total of 1000RAM if I want it. The tech guy building it was informed what I wanted, and he chose this Soundblaster card for me. Seeing that my Aardvark has 24 bit capabilities, I'm a bit disappointed that my soundcard may only offer 16.

bummer....

Larry
 
Technically I think its A/D converters are 18 bit but yes, basically The Live is a 16-bit card.

Interesting terminology thing in your post -- I've never heard it termed "soundblaster live UART card." The UART is the MIDI interface part of the card, which also has a digital audio device and a couple of MIDI synth devices. There's no SB Live card that has just a MIDI interface. Just an FYI...
 
thanks AlChuck,

sitting at work, don't remember each one, but yes I have the Soundblaster live, but also an SB midi synth UART, or something like that. Drats on the 16 bit thing. I guess that means I'll suffer a bit on sound quality, but hopefully not too much.

Appreciate the info you gave me the other day. Still haven't figured out how to get the dadblasted headphones to give me playback rather than the system's speakers. I found the patch bay in Aardvark, and set it up as the manual said to, but...still I hear my instrument only as played coiming thru the headphones; the other tracks come out the speakers. Hopefully the "Power Cakewalk" book I ordered helps me sort some of this out. but...thanks again for you assistance!
bloozguy
 
The SB Live is one card, but it "looks" like multiple devices to Windows because, well, it is... the different parts each have their own drivers and can be enabled or disabled separately.

In the Control Panel Multimedia Properties dialog box, in the Devices view, there is a tree of multimedia devices.

Under Audio Devices there is Creative SB Live! Wave Device

Under MIDI devices, for the SB Live there are several entries when you expand all the nodes of the tree:

A: SB Live! MIDI Synth
B: SB Live! MIDI Synth
Creative S/W Synth
SB Live! MIDI Out

Under Audio Devices there is
Creative SB Live! Wave Device

There's even a Creative Joystick device...

Strangely the MIDI In port does not appear in the list... I wonder if I removed it or something... I don't use it, I have a separate MIDI interface...


Re the Aardvark, with I could help you there, but I have a Delta 66, which has no heaphone output.

I doubt the Cakewalk Power! book will help much since it's not got any details about how to configure different soundcard hardware. Go over the Aardvark docs again, and check with Aardvark tech support if that doesn't help... Good luck!
 
16-bit is still a pretty comfortable space to play in. Doesn't seem like a bottleneck to me until your studio pipeline is freaky high-end.
 
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