Sound card advice please!

[apeir0n]

I recently got an ATHLON 900 mhz and an ABIT KT7 RAID motherboard. I would really like to use gigastudio on this system. It still has only 64 mb ram, but I plan to upgrade it soon to, say, 256 mb. Is there a type of ram any of you would reccomend?

Also, I obviously need a soundcard. The only thing it needs is midi in/out, stereo audio in/out and Gigastudio support.

I heard the M-audio Audiophile 2496 could be an ok card for me. Are there better, cheaper alternatives?

Thanks in advance!

[Alan]

I use the Audiophile and you wont get anything better for less.I would recomend Micron Ram.Don\'t try and go with cheap off brand ram with today\'s newer mobo\'s and Athlons or you\'ll be buying twice.Does your board support DDR?,or PC 133.

[apeir0n]

I\'m not sure about the DDR-support, I will check that out.

Thanks for your opinion!

Any other suggestions?

[marco b]

DSP 24 Value amd Audiotrak Maya.
Maya is only 20 bit but cheaper than Audiophile. But audiophile is only one with
internal MIDI IN/OUT! For extra money you
can add external MIDI for both MAya and DSP24 Value. At the end, which one is cheapest, I\'m
not sure? Maybe I would go with Audiophile!!!

[apeir0n]

Thanks!

I already made my decision: It\'s going to be the Audiophile. A LOT of people I know reccommend the card and I\'ve read some very exciting reviews. This is a winner...

This forum is great!

[Nepomuk]

I had an audiophile - my business partner is now using the PC that has it in.

Performance of the card is great, however I experienced serious problems with the midi port. Bad latency, sometimes not working at all. Switched to a Midisport 4x4 and the problems absolutely vanished. Switched back and they were all still there.

Could be something about the way the system was set up, but it\'s unlikely. I\'d consider the midi implementation side of things carefully if I were in your shoes. In fact, it\'s put me off of on-card midi altogether. In my current system I use an Echo Mia, which is great (though I found it not easy to get the drivers installed). No midi, but the cost of a separate interface is not high, and imo the cards are very value.

[apeir0n]

I bought the card, installed everything succesfully and got everything running ok (thought did not configure Logic Delta yet)

This is a cool card! Gigasampler LE was included plus some great sounds.

About the midi problems: I haven\'t sequenced with it yet. We\'ll see... I only use one synth (Korg Triton) and plan to use gigasampler and later gigastudio alongside this.