Why cant i find a soundcard with XLR ins?

  • Thread starter Thread starter chamelious
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chamelious

www.thesunexplodes.com
Why the hell are all the soundcards i ever see only ever equipped with shitty jack ins?? The M-Audio cards are expensive but only have a few jack connections on em, what the hell are you paying for?!
 
Simply put, you'll need to shell out if that feature is important to you. That's capitalism for you...
 
What the hell does everyone else use who isnt loaded?
 
Lots of cards have balanced inputs, which you would just need an xlr to trs cable and you would still have a balanced signal. If you're looking at plugging a mic directly in to the card, then you're talking about units with built in pre-amps, which of course cost alot more money.

H2H
 
Probably a good time to ask what the differance between unbalenced and balenced is. Im not gonna be pluggin shit directly into a soundcard i just wanna use the pair of XLR outs on my mixer rather than the shitty jack ones.
 
chamelious said:
Probably a good time to ask what the differance between unbalenced and balenced is. Im not gonna be pluggin shit directly into a soundcard i just wanna use the pair of XLR outs on my mixer rather than the shitty jack ones.
Click to expand...

http://www.xprt.net/~rcrowley/tvcaudio/balanced.htm

All balanced cables are the same quality regardless of the jack type (1/4" or XLR). Having 1/4" over XLR jacks doesn't mean something is "shitty" as you put it if it is a balanced connector.
 
I've got one of these, and it has XLRs. But XLRs are equivalent to 1/4" TRS when balanced, as was said before.
 
I detect a lot of anger here.

Anyways, there are plenty of cables out there where one end is XLR and the other end is 1/4" TRS (aka balanced). And you can get sound cards with balanced connections on them for ~150 to 200 bucks. The Echo Mia/MiaMidi, the Emu 1212m, The Terratec Phase 28, the M-Audio Delta 44...

(If the ~200 range is what you referred to as too expensive...well, sorry. You'll just have to get over that...)
 
tascam us122 has two xlr inputs and must be like 5 bucks by now! I wanna get an omni by m-audo. Two xlr as wel plus some other good shit. Q10 has 8 xlr imputs but i don't how much that costs.
 
M-Audio Delta 1010LT has 2 balanced input XLR (can also act as mic input), plus 6 RCA input plus two digital in. All for ~ $280. USB audio cards will often give you another pain story (except USB vers. 2).

;)
Jaymz
 
Yeah thanks all, think im gonna go with the delta 44 and use my mixer, or/and buy some valve pre's for it.
 
Chamelios...I couldn't agree with you more!

I just bought a Delta 1010LT and for the life of me cannot figure out why anyone would want all of these RCA inputs. Doesn't the world function with XLRs?

I guess they made up the RCA inputs for people that like rap music and record scratching...and recording from CD players, karaoke machines, etc.

I am struggling with the Delta 1010LT instruction manual (written by an Engineer most probably that doesn't understand the real world)...and I have to learn about balanced and unbalanced MICs...and low Z and high z...GEEZE!

From what I am reading in the forum, I am supposed to buy a mixer to route the signals to the RCA inputs on the soundcard. This is obviously adding extra cabling and signal loss for nothing! More room for problems!

I am pretty pissed at this point. I was doing fine with a SoundBlaster card through n-Track before...but I need those extra tracks.
 
Yeah, it really sucks having to learn stuff to be able to record yourself, I mean I should just be able to shell out the bucks on gear and voila - I'm a hit record producer :rolleyes:

Skibble said:
Chamelios...I couldn't agree with you more!

I am struggling with the Delta 1010LT instruction manual (written by an Engineer most probably that doesn't understand the real world)...and I have to learn about balanced and unbalanced MICs...and low Z and high z...GEEZE!


I am pretty pissed at this point. I was doing fine with a SoundBlaster card through n-Track before...but I need those extra tracks.
Click to expand...
 
I take it you are en Engineer and frowned upon my comment...or you enjoy recording from your CD player to your PC. M.C. Master Gordone has a nice ring to it.

I now understand that I have to run my drumn MICs into a mixer and then into the sound card...but this just adds an extra step of possible noise and potential cabling issues. Seems quite illogical to me.
 
The reason you need a mixer is to preamplify the signal from each mic to bring it up to a level the soundcard can work with.

Mixers come with 4, 6, 12, 24 etc preamps and so they're an economical way of enabling the recording multi mic sources like drums. The alternative would be to buy preamps individually, and that gets expensive
 
Skibble said:
I just bought a Delta 1010LT and for the life of me cannot figure out why anyone would want all of these RCA inputs. Doesn't the world function with XLRs?
Click to expand...

Maybe you need to move up to a Presonus Firepod.
 
Skibble - I think you're not understanding the process. The issue here is about balanced vs unbalanced connections, not about XLR. I wouldn't buy a 1010lt because of the unbalanced inputs, and I wouldn't buy a soundcard with built in preamps because then you are stuck with them.

The Delta 44/66 seems a very prudent buy to me, because it has quality converters and balanced connections but no pointless crap. I've upgraded my mixer twice since I bought my Delta 44, but it's been cheaper than upgrading a soundcard despite it having perfectly good converters.
 
How is that people complain that what they bought doesn't have the features they want? They should instead be kicking their own asses for buying the wrong thing.
 
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