subsekt

Hi guys,

new to this forum and just have a quick question about sound cards. What is a sound card you guys prefer? And why?

Thanks in advance

Creative labs SoundBlaster 16.


Who use a sound card ???

I have an audio interface...apogee ensemble.

It depends what you want if your recording you should be looking at something with good preamps (££££ CASH MONEY) but just for monitoring purposes the budget interfaces do fine. Im just running a Focusrite Saffire it does the job for me although the pots are a little dirty these days.

UN!T B wrote:Creative labs SoundBlaster 16.


Who use a sound card ???

I have an audio interface...apogee ensemble.

Man id love to have an apogee or RME interface.

Also go introduce yourself in the new members thread

http://www.subsekt.com/viewtopic.php?p=57132

haha introduced myself! And I just need one for my Adams. Got them a year ago but I still haven't got a sound card. and what's the difference between a sound card and an audio interface?

RME Babyface! You won't regret that - promise!

Okay thanks man! Gonna check that out.

You won't regret anything RME for sure. Rock solid driver support since almost 20 years. And the products never get old.

Welcome aboard!

Thanks rktic, trying to find my spot in here!

Read some reviews about it and all were positive. Was thinking of getting a apogee duet 2 but sounds like the RME is better. Do you guys got some experience with it if I may ask?

Better is pretty subjective
If you are merely using the interface for DAW output then anything with decent drivers will do.

RME Fireface UFX
Rednet D16

Those are nice.

Yeah just using it to connect my adams with my Mac to get some better control.

So RME or Apogee duet, no big differences?

UN!T B wrote:Creative labs SoundBlaster 16.


Who use a sound card ???

I have an audio interface...apogee ensemble.

omg that takes me back to the day that i got my soundblaster and i could hear wolfenstein as audio rather than pc speaker blips!

if u only need it to output your DAW most interfaces will work well. depends a lot on your budget. the cheap solution would be any one of the Focusrite interfaces. Just select one according to your input and output needs. Same goes for the Steinberg interfaces (the UR22 is probable the cheapest good interface out there right now).
if u wanna spend a bit more the Apogee Duet is great. Or the RME Babyface. The RME stuff is famous for the best drivers and lowest latency and they are supported for a VERY long time (they just updated the software for interfaces over 10 years old!).

Depends a lot on what u want. If you are just starting out and want a cheap interface that works go for the Steinberg UR22 or the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2. Cant go wrong with any of those on a budget

Lost to the Void wrote:Better is pretty subjective
If you are merely using the interface for DAW output then anything with decent drivers will do.

This is what i was trying to say. You need to figure out what you want from the interface, fair enough if your recording things then RME and Apogee are the way to go with really nice preamps but if its just an output save yourself the money

KlockerBen wrote:Yeah just using it to connect my adams with my Mac to get some better control.

So RME or Apogee duet, no big differences?

You really don't need to spend that much to get good 24bit output.
Don't let me put you off, but you will get no difference in output between the apogee and a prosumer interface at less than half the price such as a small focusrite.

willemb wrote:
omg that takes me back to the day that i got my soundblaster and i could hear wolfenstein as audio rather than pc speaker blips!

Thanks for the advice guys! It helped me a lot. Gonna go to my local music store today and probably go for the focusrite one.

I can say that I've owned a lot of interfaces over the years. Kept most of them around. First one was an Echo Darla which only did 20-bit audio (20-bit?). But the 44/16 was just what I needed back when you'd pay a lot just for more than 2 outputs.

My workhorse interfaces for live and home setups are M-Audio 410 and 610. They are a solid build and dependable, even got the 610 working on Linux! I don't use their Pres, just outs and the odd Line in.

Studio interfaces are all very task-specific. My console tracking runs with 2x MOTU 24 I/O, you'd be hard pressed to find a better interface if all you want is lots of analogue IO.

I use a Presonus FP-10 on the group bus (8 in, 8 out). Again I don't use the Pres, but in this case, I probably would if I needed to.

Lastly, the master bus goes through an Apogee Duet, which says something about this interface's usefulness whether you are in a studio or producing ITB on a laptop.

Generally you would pay for what you can hear - if you can't hear the difference of a budget DAC compared to the Apogee hardware then why pay more? The counter-argument is that if you are committed, in some years you will be able to hear the difference, and then if you already have an RME or Apogee there'll be no need to upgrade.

So there you have it. When I was starting out I always wanted to have as many analogue outs as possible so I could do my mixing OTB, do insert and parallel sends to various rack gear.. going to audio engineering school in 2000 sold me on OTB setups and that's one thing I still stand by.

If you are inclined the same way get a fully featured mid-range box. But if you are dead sure you are happy totally ITB, why not divert those $ towards the best DAC's you can budget for.

Thanks for your explanation man. I'm gonna try out some of the soundcards in the store itself so I get to hear them by myself. And again just using them for my daw output, not going to use it for recording.