what sound card for midi music recording synthesizers

THE Nemesis

THE Nemesis

THE Nemesis

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31 Dec 2009
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Hi, i am looking to build a PC for mainly everything from gaming to video editing and recording music from my keyboard synths.
I want to plug the keyboard straight into my PC and listen through the phones or my speakers but be able to record edit etc.
What sound card without being too expensive do you know that would suit me please?
 
You don't necessarily even need a sound card specifically for that.

If you've got a midi keyboard that works via USB then you could use any old sound card really, it wouldn't be detrimental to the quality of your recordings.
 
Hi Kylew,
Thanks, playing music is a regular thing of mine and "some" clarity being of most importance.
Im looking at the Asus Crosshair III Formula AMD 790FX mobo and seriously considering whether to get something without the added extra of sound and opting for a seperate sound card or just using it onboard?
I read to maybe just try the onboard see how i get on but to what can i compare? :D
thanks
 
Forget the onboard. Period.

If you try to use onboard sound for ANY type of recording you will have awful latency between pressing down on a key and it registering in your DAW that you have played a note.

A few questions:

1) What DAW will you be working in? Audacity? Cubase? Reason?
2) What kind of connection do you want your audio interface to have? USB? Firewire? PCI?

Just so I can get a scope on what it is you want to achieve with this.

Look forward to hearing from you

Tom
 
Hi Hughy,
Cubase,
Id imagine PCI "preferably" or USB.

I opted for the above Motherboard as it has higher end audio?
I could opt for a MObo that doesnt come with that but generally has all other aspects of speed quality etc? Sorry drifting over 2 different subjects.
Basically i want a phenom2 965 which i will o'c as price of i7 is too high for me,
i already have a windows 7, HD, 650w corsair PSU and i know the case i want, i need mobo ram & cpu fan and sound card :)
 
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Have you looked at the Intel Core i5 750? I just upgraded from an E8400 and the difference is huuuge. I personally went for the MSI p55-GD65 mobo and 4GB G.Skill RAM.

Anyhow, back to the audio.

Grab yourself a M-Audio Audiophile 192 or a 2496 (geeez I seem to recommend this company all the time on here). Either will sort out all your recording needs - now and to the future.

What version of Cubase btw?
 
i was sold a copy of Steinberg Cubase Essential 4
basically just recording samples from some old keyboards, drum kits and editing.
I havent got to grips with it yet. got a Roland & yamaha keyboards

I have a few tracks which is mostly building beats and playing samples and then recording directly onto it so excuse the out of time sequences :)
heres 1 i did but isnt tidy but in the process
www.onlinegc.co.uk/music/stuio2.mp3
i like from 1:56

Open to abuse but go easy lol, heres another
www.onlinegc.co.uk/music/stuio1.mp3
 
Mate I do mostly guitar based recording and no joke I actually really dug your stuio2.mp3!!!!

Love the syncopated drum beat. If it were me I would bring the kick drum in 4 bars earlier with the rest of the kit but thats just me!!

Also, do you know about quantization? I think your opening synth part could do with some just to tidy up the timing.

There is a lead synth line later on which takes the main focus of the track from 1:18. If I were you I would put a stereo delay on it to add some interest and create a wide stereo field in the process.

Lastly, the sort of morse code melodic line needs looking at - the melody isn't quite working there! Again, if it were me I would keep the same rhythm, turn it down slightly in the mix and actually make the whole line the FIRST note so it plays a syncopated drone on just that one note (givng the listener the impression of a morse code thingamajig).

You got to remember man this is what I do for a living - I really enjoyed your material and don't take my points to heart as music is SO personal and what I would do is totally different to what you would do and therein lies the beauty of it all!

Keep it up bro!

EDIT: One of these days I might go ahead and put up a couple of my tracks on here!!
 
I have an SCI Six-Trak, SCI Prophet-2000, Plugiator, Akai S2000 and S3200 and mix them and the pc's output through a an Edirol M100FX mixer. This has USB/Line-out/Optical outputs which I can then record to another pc or another recordeable source, including the onboard sound of my htpc. If only using vsti's or pc generated sounds, as long as the audio card or onboard sound supports ASIO drivers the latency can be accepteable, and most DAW's can freeze or render the tracks to a stereo wav or similiar to be encoded into whatever format you wish. I have the hardware as having your main pc crash whilst playing live is sooooooo bad...
 
crickey! thats a nice set up, our band once every 2 months hire out a studio for jamming etc, they have a nice set up but never actually recorded anything as yet as we dont have enough material. I want to convert my garage and have started double layering walls ceiling with 2 layers of underlay and some mega thick carpet lol.
hopefully in a year or so it will be all set up. I will most probably go for PC setup but hardware if we ever play live
 
Ha ha no we build a custom designed log cabin (with a room inside a room seperated by an air vacuum).

As I record loud rock bands we thought this was the best approach!!!

Thanks for the kind words a hell of a lot of blood, sweat & tears has gone into this project - I am about to open the doors to the general public in the coming months (and not just industry friends).

Should be exciting!!!
 
if you keep a close eye on fleabay, there are plenty of older rack mounted hardware bits n pieces coming up. My S3200 with internal hard drive was only £36 plus £15 petrol to pick it up, and the s2000 was £20. They are great for live situations as I trigger samples via midi through them, and they have real nice punchy filters which help cut through the mix. My two SCI synths I will be buried with, I have a couple of usb/midi keyboards to play vsti's with and it can make me look like a right jean michel jarre (exept with less talent of course...). My main soundcard is a creative x-fi fatal1ty with front bay, was pretty cheap and has midi in/out, multiple outputs and best of all optical in and out. I use it with the latency set to 10ms which is pretty good and results in excellent sound, and offload as much as I can to my hardware. My rack has a patchbay in it, distribution for mains, the akai's, a midiverb outboard processor (midi controlled reverbs, excellent if you program them nicely) and a nad amp which is on a rack tray to my 4 cheap eltax speakers. total cost, approx £1000 and sounds great. I have no example tracks I can lay my hands on, but shall try and dig some up...
 
Well just ordered my bits from O.C, minus the sound card as i will review them first before i stick anything in am desperate too replace my current PC which i got from OC in May 2004 and have been upgrading but has seen better days.

I have ordered
AMDPhenom II X4 Quad Core 965 Black Edition 3.40GHz (Socket AM3) will try a o'c to 3.8
Asus Crosshair III Formula AMD 790FX (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard
Corsair Dominator XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 16000C9D Twin3X (TW3X4G1600C9D)
Antec 902 Nine Hundred Two Ultimate Gaming Case - Black
Corsair H50-1 High-Performance CPU Watercooler
 
I myself have tried using a PC for music. I gave up.

Mac are vastly superior for Music.

I myself have gone bak to my trusty Atari Falcon. Using a 20 year old computer with 20 year old software and I love it... Thats half the fun for me. Plus, since I only use the computer as a saving device rather than a cheating tool, I know that 100% of everythign that plays on my music, is all mine and nothign is generated by software at all.

As for Midi with a PC.

Simply get a USB to MIDI Adapter.

I have a few solutions for connecting Midi devices to the PC, Creative cards with the live drives are nice, I recently bought an old Hercules Game theatre purely because it was an external box with midi and both analog and digital I/O like the creatives and this does a wonderful job with the Midi, but the simplest way is USB to MIDI.

As has already been said, dont use the onboard for the Midi Playback... Use the keyboards & Expanders for that.

I do have a few hundred gigs of SoundFonts for Creative cards and these are mostly naff to be honest, and while the ycan be brilliant when done right, the hassle of it all is simply not worth the effort.

So, I dont think that the SoundCard is really anything to worry about at all... Use the USB-MIDI cables and use the Sound from your keyboard and you will be fine.
 
Yer I guess if you are working with the lower sample rates the Creative stuff would be fine.

I record audio so my needs are somewhat different.

If you can budget in lots of RAM and a seperate quick HD for your samples thats prolly a good thing to do too.

As to the mac vs pc debate I was running a Mac Pro in my studio untill a month ago. Although my main DAW of choice is Logic 9 on a Mac I would always recommend a PC. Here's why:

1) Macs go out of date quicker due to lack of flexibility in terms of upgrades
2) The cases are LOUD
3) You can hack mac os x onto a pc although the legality is questionable

I just got rid of me Mac as it couldn't handle my projects anymore. Don't get me wrong - in terms of reliability it was fantastic. Also, I will probably have to buy another Mac Pro when the money starts coming in as I am not comfortable working professionally with a hack pro but it did save me £500 and now my projects work great (no crackles, disk too slow errors etc).
 
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