Minimum sound card for real-time guitar input

Arterion · 9 Feb 2010 at 12:23

Hi all,

Experimenting with running my guitar into my PC, but with the built in motherboard sound there's a fairly severe lag- what's the cheapest sound card I could get to alleviate this problem?

hughythomas · 9 Feb 2010 at 12:35

M-Audio Audiophile 2496 although there was another guy on here who reportedly was using a gaming card for inputting synths into his DAW without any major latency issues however with something like a guitar you really want an audio interface with a hi-Z input and good converters (not to mention low latency at small buffer sizes). These are all areas where a gaming card will fall flat on its arse.

Dreadhead · 9 Feb 2010 at 22:15

I have a Creative Xfi Fatality with the front panel and get roughly 12ms of lag when playing guitar through guitar rig.. not too bad considering the card is so cheap now.
Note that you have to have the 'audio creation mode' active in the sound card settings and configure the ASIO driver in the audio application in order to achieve acceptable latency.

EGuitarStar · 10 Feb 2010 at 00:57

I would recommend that you look at this product from Line6 before going and buying a soundcard. I have one of these and they are amazing in terms of sound quality and recording. With this you will not need to worry about the input lag that you currently are having issues with.

ChazHurst · 14 Feb 2010 at 02:12

The GuitarPort, as mentioned above, is a great little interface. Plus it comes with a whole suite of low (zero?) latency effects and amp modelling. I find with my interface (Edirol FA-101) that, even with the lowest latency set, there will be some level of delay once you've added any VST effects to a project.

hughythomas · 14 Feb 2010 at 20:22

I think from the sounds of it a Guitarport/Toneport etc etc would be good for the original poster although I would argue that grabbing a soundcard will give greater flexibility for the future if and when he decides to start recording seriously. Still, I guess you can always just keep the Guitarport (and the VST/AU/RTAS or whatever plugs) and then buy a decent audio interface if your needs change.

The Line6 has my vote as well at this stage.