Killer sound card's for Music Making

Hi Everybody, Merry Christmas

Some of us were chating and thought it might be an idea to start a thread in Sound City for Sound Card's to Make Music with.

There is a vast chocie out there, from £20 second hand classics right up to mega bucks pro gear.

What do you use and what do you like? If there are any outstanding card's you have used tell us all, we want to know.

I'm using a very old card at the moment (Audigy 2 of some type), I use the KX drivers with them as they unlock a whole world of routing and improve latency no end. The sound quality is V average, given it's age and spec (and that I got it for nothing) I think it's quite good and get a lot of use our of it. It gets the job done alright.

However, if you put it next to a device like Ozzies Motu 828 it really does look rather shabby sad and limited (it shall be replaced asap btw).

You can do practicaly most things on any soundcard these days, so which ones make you smile and which ones make you wince.

All the best

Nic

The X-FI's have a Audio Creation Mode, now sure if your thing, certainly aint used by me.

I've not used those much myself, it would certainly get you going making music though.

Currently using Digidesign 192 IO's in our studios, also have a couple of RME FireFace 800's and some MOTU gear for doing mobile stuff with and an old Sound Devices USB-Pre for doing system measurements through.

Im using my Atari CLAB Falcon, CT63, SoundPool3+8, FDI as my main Machine, with some retro gear or varying quality, through my El-Cheap and nasty 8 Channel mixer, with the Analog Audio coming from that, and the digital audio from the Atari, and they get mixed up through a PC and the Audigy 1 Card with an older SBLive Drive.

Does the job just perfectly, if a little naf, the quality is better than my skills need them to be, so I have no pretences.

When recording, I simply have it set to RECORD "WHAT U HEAR".

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Although as a kind of solution to a MIDI based PC setup, I used a Turtle Beach card with a DB50XG DAughterboard for a while, but then found the SW1000XG was the best card I have owned.

Old I suppose, but quality that far outweighs my skills as I said.

Wow, those both sound like great systems. Wish I has some of it. I always wanted to get my hands on an SW1000XG. I remember when they came out, they have loads of options.

I don't make music but I like to mix mp3s with Traktor DJ Studio 3. I now use my X-fi which does it ok for my bedroom needs but for some time I used the E-MU 0404. It's a good card for the money ~£60 with ASIO and lots of music making features I never needed like DSP effects. Optical out was nice too.
CD/MP3 listening was also fantastic, definitely better that the X-fi. But it wouldn't work at all in some games so it's now in a box (that reminds me, I should probably sell it)