Soundcards...

Off-Topic
1

Looking to buy a new soundcard to serve Renoise and my recording requirements. I currently suffer with a card that has a -72db noise bed - so whenever I record vox or guitars I have to contend with noise. I want a card with ASIO support, and no or very little noise on the recording channel.

Obviously I could fork out for a $20000 card, but I simply don’t have the money. Under $1000 would be good, but under $500 would be even better, of course.

All my friends say ‘get an Audigy’, but I figured that would be too obvious.

2

The E-MU cards are one of the best you can get. And they are very cheap. If you do a lot of recording the ‘M’ cards (emu 1820m and 1212m) have very good A/D converters, -120db effectively! (the same converters as protools have). Dont get fooled by the price. Highly recommended.

cheers

3

I would recommend a Terratec 24/96. For less than $ 200 you get a ASIO / Gigasampler - Compatible Soundcard with a very high quality chinch in and output…

I have this card since years now and finally, I managed, which drivers I should use ;)

The ASIO-Drivers work perfect with Modplug, so I guess, Renoise should work, too. This card also as optical in and output and the sampling quality is marvellous.

4

you mean… the latest? :)

I own an EWX 24/96 myself since about 4 years.

It is actually a very clean sounding card, but the drivers are just horrible.

Until the latest version (a couple of years ago), it for example had a problem when fast forwarding audio streams: after fast forwarding, the samplerate halved… :huh:

By the way, I think that some of Terratec people was involved with making of BUZZ, the freeware modular “tracker”: in the software bundle there is BUZZ, and it is widely mentioned in the manual as something of which the makers of EWX are proud of.

5

I had one Win98-Problem with the Terratec. The DMA-Channels locked and the card played an endless loop.

With the new drivers (WDM) and Windoze XP, everything works terrific

6

Thank you for that gentlemen… The E-MU is looking pretty nice at this stage. However if anyone else has recommendations to share I’m still interested to hear more :) Bring it on, as the Renoise installer says…

7

Actually I’m building a PC that will be totaly designed around Renoise, so anyone has got any other hardware to recommend then fire away…

Why don’t we have a hardware forum? Is it because there are millions of other hardware boards out there?

8

You did not tell much about all the tasks your soundcard has to handle. No. of inputs/outputs? Preamps? DSP?

I take it you are looking for standard simple PCI-soundcard. Then I would go for E-MU, as suggested.

And for CPU get an AMD one. By hardware do you mean musical gear or PC hardware?

9

Rme Systems are the best choice at the moment, but also the most expensive, I reckon. http://www.rme-audio.com

Emu is very smart - never seen better ones for the bucks.

Well… ewxs or dmx 6fire? Better get one of the Phase series. The older ones will not be developped any further.

Directsound ist not working. No support for directx 9 or above.

ESI Juli@ seems to be okay, too: http://www.esi-pro.com WHQL certified drivers.

Staudio 3000M is a smart one, too: http://www.staudio.com

10

Well a PCI card would be good to start, like the EMU. Some of thoes I/O interfaces look amazing. I’m still in the dark ages when it comes to soundcards, still using an CreativeSB128, noisy as hell and no ASIO.

Having DSPs and many inputs would be handy, but not critical. Low noise and latency are critical. When the Renoise Devs make a mulitchannel live-record option I’ll only ever need multiple I/Os then. Oh what a day that will be! :D :yeah:

Thanks for the AMD recommendation. I’m planing to build the PC hardward into an Antec Sonata, a cheep way to get rid of fan noise without buying long cables.

Oh and if I had the dosh I’d get that Fireface 800… drrooolll… :rolleyes:

11

If u hate fan noise then u get a silent PSU as well, but a.f.a.I.remember it’s included in Sonata. If u are on a limited budget I would first put my money on good monitor, keyboard, mouse, case and PSU, cause they are the most lasting part of the system and the human interface and display devices are what you are staring/operating all the time, so they play a very big role in usability comfort.

EMU is good for you I think. Cannot know for sure, but I think it would be good to almost any homesound-tweakhead.

EMU has DSP and maybe will have a possibility to use it’s DSP processor for VST effects in the future. There was some topic about it, but I’m too lazy to dig it up.

There’s something. Hope this gives some perspective.

12

I do have an Terratec Ews 88Mt. It’s a nice card, but the drivers are - as aforementioned - kinda weird. It happens quite often that an Application Crash renders the driver unusuable until System reboot. Even worse, though, is the fact that i sometimes have Audio Dropouts (or similar Problems) although the Cpu Usage is only at 20%. Wouldn’t recommend this one…

13

Thanks ‘tweakheads’, hehehe :D - I think I’m on the right track now… and only weeks away from the 1.5beta my plans for world domination will be complete! Nothing but 100% music output :blink:

Now… hmmm forgot to feed myself… whoops! :unsure:

14

:blink: “maybe”? You don’t have such option right now?
I confess, I’m about to change soundcard too…

15

Well I’m SURE you haven’t missed this topic, have you?