My E-MU 1616m has probably drawn its last breath and i’m on the lookout for a new sound card.
I was very happy with what the E-MU had to offer, jack/xlr inputs for my guitar/mic, low latency and ASIO support. I need something similar.
Basically i need:
1x XLR/Jack input (with a decent preamp)
Low Latency
2x monitor jack out
Practical interface with knobs/sliders (i don’t want to plug my guitar on the back of my huge tower)
It wouldn’t hurt if it had other features too, but i already blew my budget on a computer upgrade, so it can’t be too expensive.
I don’t know if i need ASIO support or not, because it seems the ones that has jack/xlr inputs do not seem to support ASIO. Can anyone tell me why i need ASIO or not?
It seems that i get a better latency with ASIO than with directsound, so would i get a higher latency if it does not support ASIO?
I don’t really like to rely on asio4all, because that thing has been very buggy on previous systems i’ve had.
Is USB 2.0 fast enough to record guitars live?
Can anyone shed a light on the subject or give me a suggestion to which card would be best for my needs.
Roland UA-55 looks a bit like my good old E-MU, but no ASIO it seems though. I wouldn’t mind finding a bit cheeper alternative…
hmmm…Native Instruments Komplete Audio 6 seems to support ASIO and have everything i need to about the same price.
Roland UA-55 looks a bit like my good old E-MU, but no ASIO it seems though. I wouldn’t mind finding a bit cheeper alternative…
I have the Roland UA 55 and it certainly does have an ASIO driver, using it on Windows 8.1 just fine and it’s very stable. If you want to actually record using the Hi-Z input it might not be the best choice though. When Hi-Z is enabled it adds a sort of humming to the signal at a certain frequency, which might not be ideal. One can work around that a bit but there might be better options out there for this. I barely record using those inputs, so it never really bothered me.
If you’re on budget and able to find a M-Audio Delta 44 or 66 card, i’d have a M-Audio Omni I/O box lying around here for it. My Delta 66 card died and i went with an external solution this time.
USB 2.0 is indeed fast enough to record guitars. I can’t tell the difference that some 5-10ms makes, and of course Renoise makes that up for you automatically. Most interfaces have their own driver that will definitely be better than DirectSound, sometimes they’ll be a kind of ASIO driver, but just using whatever driver your supposed to use with the interface should do fine even if it’s not ASIO.
I use a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2. It has everything you want pretty much and it’s fairly cheap. I will warn that if your guitar pickups are strong enough you may have to turn the volume knob on your guitar down a tad to avoid clipping (or if you have a mixer just fix it with that instead).
Probably most interfaces in that general price range will do fine. Presonus Audiobox looks good too. That Roland actually looks really good, as it also has MIDI I/O.
I have the Roland UA 55 and it certainly does have an ASIO driver, using it on Windows 8.1 just fine and it’s very stable. If you want to actually record using the Hi-Z input it might not be the best choice though. When Hi-Z is enabled it adds a sort of humming to the signal at a certain frequency, which might not be ideal. One can work around that a bit but there might be better options out there for this. I barely record using those inputs, so it never really bothered me.
If you’re on budget and able to find a M-Audio Delta 44 or 66 card, i’d have a M-Audio Omni I/O box lying around here for it. My Delta 66 card died and i went with an external solution this time.
Ah, it didn’t say it supported ASIO in the description. So, what is the benefit of this Hi-Z you speak of, could i turn it off and get rid of the humming? What’s the point with adding humming in the first place, what was the purpose of that?
Thanks for the offer, i would prefer to have an external unit myself, but i’ve not decided yet, but it would have been very nice to be able to use it with my laptop too.
Seems like the UA 55 is cheeper than the scarlett…
I’ve got a Scarlett 18i8 that I’ve used to record guitars, and I haven’t had any problem with line noise. The 18i8 detects line-level input versus instrument (hi-z) and pads the input gain automatically, but the 2i2 offers a switch on the front panel that does the same thing.
The big reason I’d recommend a Scarlett over anything else is the mic preamps. They’re fabulous. I recorded a bunch of samples of kids drums when I first bought a decent condenser mic to go with my interface (I’m still dragging my feet cropping and normalizing, though ) and they came out great.
Another good reason to go with the 2i2 in particular is the direct monitoring it offers, so you can monitor your guitar playing or singing with zero latency. The Scarletts all include WDM, ASIO, and Core Audio support as well.
Ah, it didn’t say it supported ASIO in the description. So, what is the benefit of this Hi-Z you speak of, could i turn it off and get rid of the humming? What’s the point with adding humming in the first place, what was the purpose of that?
Thanks for the offer, i would prefer to have an external unit myself, but i’ve not decided yet, but it would have been very nice to be able to use it with my laptop too.
Seems like the UA 55 is cheeper than the scarlett…
It’s obviously not meant to do that, but more a fault of the Roland device. Regarding Hi-Z inputs, let me link this article instead. It’s switchable at the back of the device so you can indeed turn it off, but it might be quite a low level then for recording a guitar. Since i have nothing to plug in here for testing i can’t tell for sure how strong it is, it was just something i have read in the reviews / comments for that interface. Around 60hz some unwanted stuff is added during the recording, which might affect the ability of using guitar amps or you have to work around it by EQing a bit down there. So the signal isn’t as clean as it should be. I did update some firmware on the interface, but again not sure if it fixed anything due to lack of testing abilities. The main reason i went for it was the digital I/O which most of the more basic ones seem to lack. Another big plus is, it doesn’t need any power supply and simply works straight of the USB bus power, it looks damn sexy too.
I see it has a ground lift switch on the back, so maybe turning it on can remove the humming?
I have a hard time deciding, Scarlett has all i need i believe, it seems to record guitar well and the mic preamps is a bonus on the top of it. On the other hand, with UA55 i seem to get more for my money plus it’s cheaper. Makes me a bit suspicious that theycompromise on the quality, as inusingcheaper parts, andcompensates for it with more features? I’m a bit concerned by that humming…
That’s a valid concern but there’s a lot of things that can cause humming. I haven’t used the UA55 so I can’t speak directly to its quality, only that it appears to be more for the money than the Scarlett.
The Scarlett I have used for one year now and it’s pretty solid. I did have an issue where it just completely died on me and I had to send it in for repairs, and I had an issue where it took way longer than it should have to get the information from their support in order to initiate that process, but once I got it back it was solid as a rock. I have balanced cables running to my monitors and they are dead silent. No hum. Every interface I had prior has always picked up some weird hum or noise or something. This one is dead silent, and is even surprisingly resistant to the digital whine cell phones cause. The only minor annoyance I have with it whatsoever is that I have to turn down the volume knob on my guitar a tad when I play rhythm to avoid clipping, which really isn’t that big of a deal.
If you’re concerned about the quality of the UA55, I’d say you can’t really go wrong with the Scarlett.
I read somewhere and i see it on the picture of it now that you can’t adjust the volume of the headphones and monitors separately and that is a bit inconvenient.
Well, despite the lack of separate headphone slider i went for the Quad-Capture.
At first i couldn’t get it to work before i read it needs USB2 and won’t work with an USB3.
It certainly sounds very silent and good, my rokits wasn’t tuned in to this kind of power, so there was a moment of panic there when they suddenly started jumping around. Pretty shure my neighbour heard that.
) and they came out great.
