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Recommended USB Soundcard?

Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2003 8:32 am
by Guest
Hi Guys!
What USB soundcard would you recommend?
It should have MIDI I/O and low latency (WDM or ASIO, as Sonar 3 can do ASIO)
Theres no need for 24 bit/96kHz.

As Im a poor student it should not cost than 150 $/€.

Thanx
Volker

Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2003 8:36 am
by andychap
If you post some more details about what PC/Laptop and set up you have then it might be easier to recommend something.

Andy

Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2003 9:04 am
by Guest
andychap wrote:If you post some more details about what PC/Laptop and set up you have then it might be easier to recommend something.

Andy
Hi Andy!

At first i would like to run the soundcard with my
AMD 1,8 Ghz
512 DDR Ram
Win2k
Sonar 2.1

Later I wanna run the soundcard on a notebookj I havent bought yet.

Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2003 9:34 am
by andychap
I think you have to look at the M Audio or edirol ones. The trouble is they can run quite expensive if you want midi and audio on one interface.

I would suggest if you have an onboard soundcard on your PC then use that for Midi and then buy an audio interface.

I have done it this way. Being disabled, I am on a low income and also have a family to support so I don't get much money to spend on PC's and music.

My setup is an old SB live Card which I use for midi only with all the audio disabled. I then have a Creative MP3+ USB audio interface which is quite a new product and is ideal PC or Lap top. It has analogue Line in and out and also optical digital in and out plus headphone out and mic in. It cost me 40 GB pounds and produces quite good results. I can get down to 10ms latency in Sonar 1.3XL and 3ms in FruityLoops Studio, as long as I don't push it to hard. That is with the creative drivers, there might be some WDM ones somewhere on the net if the product becomes more established.

That is about all I can suggest, it is the cheapest way I could come up with reasonable results.

Hope it helps.

Andy

Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2003 2:23 pm
by MikeN
I've just got the soundblaster extigy which has every connection you could want, including both midi and optical I/O.

Cheers

Mike

Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2003 8:59 am
by Guest
MikeN wrote:I've just got the soundblaster extigy which has every connection you could want, including both midi and optical I/O.

Cheers

Mike
I have the "older Extigy" SB Live Platinum....its okay for beginning, but now i want a soundcard that is made for making music, not for playing games or wathcing DVDs.
Creative drivers just dont have a good latency.

Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2003 2:38 pm
by corky
Extigy isn't really a proper audio card - just another SB multi-purpose card. Also would not recommend using any laptop's onboard audio (probably a sound MAX chip) for recording. I used to get very good results using an edirol UA20 audio capture device, which retails at about 140 GBP - don't know what that translates into in dollars - with a 1.2ghz sony vaio laptop. The card includes a pre-amp, has 3 way switching for mic/line/guitar, has proper jack inputs as well as midi in and out and phono outs. All it lacks is digital in. WDM drivers worked fine, and it also offers ASIO - but I never used those drivers.

If you are using a laptop, check out one of the many web pages that tell you how to maximise Windows for audio recording too.

Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2003 4:52 pm
by Wildman
For the money & function, the, "Audiophile 2496" from, "M Audio". Info @ www.m-audio.com. It has 2 analog in/outs, 1 SPDIF Digital in/out & a 15 pin/serial connection. Cost is approx $140 dollars/US if you have a music store you buy from, they should be able to give you it for that price or less. I run 2 of these. One on my PC & the other on my MAC. I also have USB midi interfaces for each. :roll: Wildman in NC

SB drivers and what USB souncard to buy?

Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2004 1:23 pm
by Phobos
I used to have the Soundblaster Live Drive 2 card and front panel. That was OK and I would suggest that people having trouble with SB latency to check out a site www.come.to/SBlive, I think its a private project but I got really good results with those drivers, a latency of about 2 ms.
Now I swithed from PC to a Compaq 1,6 Ghz notebook and my interests right now are for buying a USB soundcard, either the Edirol UA-20 or the Sound Blaster Extigy. I'd definetly go for the Edirol if they were the same price but I would like to know more about UA-20 users thoughts on it's drivers and latency?

Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 4:09 pm
by Guest
Anonymous wrote:
MikeN wrote:I've just got the soundblaster extigy which has every connection you could want, including both midi and optical I/O.

Cheers

Mike
I have the "older Extigy" SB Live Platinum....its okay for beginning, but now i want a soundcard that is made for making music, not for playing games or wathcing DVDs.
Creative drivers just dont have a good latency.