Need advice on choosing a PCI soundcard

[pumapenguin]

Hi all,

I was hoping someone might be able to advise me on which soundcard I should purchase. Ideally I'm looking for a soundcard that I can do a bit of home-recording with - acoustic/electric guitar and flute mostly. Also playing/recording VST instruments using Cubase.

I've been considering both the Sound Blaster 7.1 X-Fi Elite Pro and the long established M-AUDIO 2496. I've read a few negative things about the X-FI Elite Pro and as it costs so much more I'm thinking...is it really worth that extra money? Ok - it's got a fancy breakout box and remote control. But do I really need that extra stuff? I just need a soundcard that will allow me to do some decent quality recording.

I have been using the Creative Audigy2 for a number of years and was very happy with the sound quality. I don't need bells and whistles. Unfortunately my newly updated computer setup has a problem with this card - something to do with IRQ settings on the ASUS PQ5 Pro Turbo motherboard bios - and they are not re-configurable. Lots of static and crackling.

At this point I have made a shortlist of cards. I'm hoping that someone out there will be able to help narrow this list down a bit more. Any advice would be much appreciated.

Something else that I'd really appreciate some help on... I currently have two midi keyboards. An M-Audio 88ES and an older midiman 49 key. I managed to break the USB port on the midiman a number of years ago and have never bothered to get it repaired. A couple of questions...

1) If you connect a midi keyboard using a midi cable rather than USB does/can this affect/improve latency?

2) Is it possible to connect one keyboard via midi and the second keyboard via USB and have both playing simultaneously?

Here is the list I am currently considering:

1) ASUS Xonar Essence STX (around £120)

2) Asus Xonar D2 Sound Card (around £85)

3) M-Audio Audiophile 2496 (around £50)

4) M-Audio Delta 44 - Professional 4 In/4 Out 24Bit/96Khz Pci Audio Card (around £120) (no midi port)

5) M-Audio Delta 66 PCI soundcard (around £145) (no midi port)

6) M-Audio Delta 1010 LT Audio Interface (around £135)

7) CREATIVE Sound Blaster 7.1 X-Fi Elite Pro PCI sound card (around £230)

Thanks in advance.

pumapenguin

[tacman7]

What about the emu 1212?

[jagcmos]

No recommendation on a sound card, but have you tried to move your Creative Audigy2 card to a different pci slot, if you have more than one available.

It's probably sharing a irq with the video and is causing lots of internal noise.

[pumapenguin]

Originally Posted by jagcmos

No recommendation on a sound card, but have you tried to move your Creative Audigy2 card to a different pci slot, if you have more than one available.

It's probably sharing a irq with the video and is causing lots of internal noise.

Thanks for your reply.

Yeah, I've tried switching PCI slots (plus switching the PCIe slot for the Nvidia -Zotac branded - 9800 graphics card) - I have even tried running the graphics card without the nvidia drivers installed. No solution. I've also tried alternative drivers. No solution. The static and crackling won't go away. It's a damn pity - as I'd be perfectly happy to continue using my Audigy2 if it would only work!

My computer set-up is an Intel Quad Q9550 processor on an ASUS PQ5 Pro Turbo motherboard.

[pumapenguin]

Originally Posted by tacman7

What about the emu 1212?

Thanks for this new suggestion. I've been checking the emu 1212 out on the internet - it looks very good also. My nightmare list grows longer....You know I might completely abandon my music-making hobby and just spend the next few years of my life making this list as long as possible. I could develop it into an art-form....lol.

1) ASUS Xonar Essence STX (around £120)

2) Asus Xonar D2 Sound Card (around £85)

3) M-Audio Audiophile 2496 (around £50)

4) M-Audio Delta 44 - Professional 4 In/4 Out 24Bit/96Khz Pci Audio Card (around £120) (no midi port)

5) M-Audio Delta 66 PCI soundcard (around £145) (no midi port)

6) M-Audio Delta 1010 LT Audio Interface (around £135)

7) CREATIVE Sound Blaster 7.1 X-Fi Elite Pro PCI sound card (around £230)

8) E-mu 1212M V2 PCI Card (around £115)

[jagcmos]

It's possible that any pci sound card you install may suffer from the same irq interference, if that is the cause of the problem.

Have you given any thought to a usb or firewire interface ?

EDIT: If you're interested in checking your irq information
Click Start->Run
enter msinfo32 and click on OK.

A window should appear. Expand the Hardware Resources button and select IRQ

This will show you what devices are sharing irqs.

[pumapenguin]

Originally Posted by jagcmos

It's possible that any pci sound card you install may suffer from the same irq interference, if that is the cause of the problem.

Have you given any thought to a usb or firewire interface ?

EDIT: If you're interested in checking your irq information
Click Start->Run
enter msinfo32 and click on OK.

A window should appear. Expand the Hardware Resources button and select IRQ

This will show you what devices are sharing irqs.

Thanks for the tip. I had checked this before in system>hardware manager>then something else...can't remember. Think the conflict was happening on IRQ channel 16. I'll have another go at installing the Audigy 2 again and check again using the msinfo command line. Cheers!

I have not really given much consideration to a usb or firewire device. The Audigy 2 was working perfectly well in my old system. I just get the sense that a PCI card would be most robust and reliable - particuarly in terms of using VST instruments with Cubase. I just get the sense with usb/firewire devices that they might well be excellent at getting audio into the computer - it's just I have no idea what they are like in terms of getting audio out of the computer. I have zero knowledge or experience of such devices.

[jagcmos]

Yea, I don't blame you for wanting to stay with a pci card. Firewire and usb can come with their share of problems too.

Too bad that this new motherboard is giving you such noise problems.

Good luck.

[tacman7]

Your kind of going to a lot of trouble on "bottom of the market" research.

Any good card is going to be about the same as another good card.

But shopping can be fun.

There's a lot of good cards out there.

I like the emu because of routing. The patchmix software, which takes some effort to learn lets you do a lot of things other software does not. But I had the 1820m, maybe that's not so much of an issue on a 2in2out card.

PCI is the most stable and accurate midi etc.

If you think your going to need more I/O eventually move up now, go used and get it for about the same money as a new 2bus card.

[bozmillar]

If you want to use the sound card for recording, then your price/features ratio will not be as high if you go sound blaster. They usually come with a bunch of other features that don't matter if you are using it for music creation, and you pay for that.

If you want to stay PCI, I have the delta 66 and think it's great. As you mentioned, it doesn't have any midi input's, but you can get a usb midi device for $30.

As far as sound quality goes, they're all going to sound pretty much the same in this price range. The sound blaster stuff will have some extra features for gaming and stuff because that's the target audience.