good sound card

[banquo]

hey,

im pretty new to this whole scene, and would value any advice from the good people who lurk around the gerrtian forums.

im thinking of buying a new sound card, is there any model i shoud look out for in the 'under 300 euro' range?

[StrangeCat]

hey,

im pretty new to this whole scene, and would value any advice from the good people who lurk around the gerrtian forums.

im thinking of buying a new sound card, is there any model i shoud look out for in the 'under 300 euro' range?

I am just passing through but hey I'll answer this. A sound card is only as good as your A/D converters, your converters are only as good as the sound cards drivers. Most popular A/D Converters is Digi designs protools. Of course there ae others. in your price rang I would look at something like Emu 1212M , Deltas, and other cards.
http://www.tweakheadz.com/soundcards_for_the_home_studio.htm
check out that guys page for starters.
hope it helps.
back to music.

[ZeroZero]

Audiophile 2496 keeps a lot of people happy

[mcdoma2000]

I use the EMU0404, and I've been happy with it so far. A note, though - if you decide to buy the 0404, you may want to buy EMU's Proteux X - for only about $50 more, you get a software synth/sampler with some sounds that lots of people really like AND the EMU0404 card.

Mark

[kitekrazy]

Audiophile 2496 keeps a lot of people happy

Also gives you the option of using Gigastudio. EMU doesn't offer GSIF drivers.

[ailteoir]

echo make some fairly good cards as well.

[J.B]

I think this depends on, what you want to do with the soundcard...

I, for example, prefer soundcards with lots of digital inputs|outputs and good routing possibilities - as a kind of future investment (digital is digital even in ten years, I think) and also soundcards which can produce sound on their own - like dsp-cards with synths or onboard-ram and a sampler (have an old EWS64 (a little troublesome isa-card) featuring 64MB onboard-ram and 2 spdif-out = cheap 20 Euro - 64 voice 64 MB sampler with 4 channel digital output (and you could put a yamaha-GM|GX-daughterboard in it, too or cascading two of that cards giving you 128MB Sampleram and 128 voices, 64 additional GM-Voices and 8 digital outs...)). But that may not be something you want to do with your soundcard or to your computer...

But for a starter in computer-based music (well i started a year ago exactly with dsp-cards :D ), they may be to complicated - and - if not bought second-hand - cost much more than 300 euro (but less then 300 if used. I payed 200 for a used korg oasys and 250 for a used creamware pulsar (and 20 for that old EWS))

I also think, that the emu cards could be a nice investment. Especially if it should be possible to upgrade the 1212m later with that I/O-Box for their bigger cards 1820 and 1820m. This Box holds 2 Mic-Preamps which they say are of a good not too cheap quality and also some analog I/O.
And that card even has some low-to-medium-quality dsp-effects and good digital filters in it, I read somewhere.
You could also buy that emulator|proteus x sampler later for it, if you want to do sampling or using samples (But thats a soft-sampler so it may compete with GPO for processor power)