which sound card for making music

a1cap0ne · 12 Mar 2008 at 13:34

a friend of mine has asked me to build him a PC as he is interested in making music.

I have never bought or used a sound card before so know nothing about them. Can someone recommend me a good one?

stopstartstall · 13 Mar 2008 at 00:05

Depends what kind of music he wants to make. Is he recording live bands or playing virtual instruments and samples/midi in something like rap or hiphop? If it's the latter he'll need midi inputs as well as audio.

M-audio and Emu make good cheapish cards. I've got a delta 44 for audio I/O and I've never had a problem with it.

DJ_Switch · 15 Mar 2008 at 15:56

My last 3 sound cards for music production have been MOTU 828mk2, M-Audio Delta 1010 and the Mackie Onyx 400F. Without a doubt the Mackie has been the best in terms of sound quality,pre amps, dacs and has rock solid performance and reliability. It's not as flexible as the MOTU (routing etc.)but I'd advise against the MOTU unless using a MAC....support is terrible for Windows. I think the Mackie can be had for only £400 now so it's by far the best deal. It all depends on what he is wanting to do with it but it's worth having the options available as far as connections and longevity. I hope this helps.

OzZie · 15 Mar 2008 at 16:28

I can recommend the MOTU 828 (have one myself), but its expensive for a single piece of hardware, as like mentioned, is probibly way over the top for what he needs.

Internal PCI-soundcards from M-Audio and EMU are pretty good, but again, you're looking at at least £150 for it to be worthwhile.

If it's electronic music production, then look at getting a MIDI controller with lots of adjustable parameters, and for software, Reason 4 and Ableton live are pretty decent for this genre.

Need to know how powerfull his PC is too. No point spending money on a decent soundcard if he's running a slow desktop configuration, as it'll just hold it back.