what is the best sound card ?

[tukuniata]

Hello everybody i would to know what is the external or internal best sound card in your opinion. i m asking because i would like to buy a new external sound card for my laptop(windows xp realtek sound card ). As most of you knows realtek it is really poor. i would some advice from you guys because i know that cool people i will find them in this forum.
feel free to reply thanks very much.

i nearly forget happy new year to all of you out there

[steve]

Personally I am very happy with my old SoundBlaster Live Value. The sound quality is good (except for the microphone input, which I don't use), it is totally stable, it has MIDI in/out/thru , has a reasonable good hardware DSP built in, hardware sound font support, supports my Yamaha DX50 daughter board,.... it does everything I need (second hand value around $5).

A friend of mine is saving up for one of these: http://www.millennium-music.co.uk/home/ ... ode=detail I expect it will be slightly better quality than my sound card.

[Polleke]

Personally I would recommend ANY external card. But if you really want the cool stuff, go to a music store instead of a computer store.
Internal cards often show problems related to the power supply of the computer (e.g. 50 Hz hum). This interference acts on the analogue part of the card. With an external card all the analogue is outside the computer's housing.
It can also make a big difference wether your wall outlet has an earth lead. Especially laptops can act terrible when connected to the mains. Therefore my advice when recording with a laptop: pull the plug and run the battery.

Happy new year to you too!

Paul

ps: sorry for the poor English!

[steve]

Internal cards often show problems related to the power supply of the computer (e.g. 50 Hz hum).

I have often heard of this (mostly in the advertising information for external sound cards), but in my experience with dozens of different sound cards I have never experienced any such problem on full size computers.
This is not the case with laptops however, and I have found that lap tops are very prone to interference from their power supply.

I would generally choose a PCI device rather than a USB device as they are less prone to drop-outs, and recording "stereo mix" is usually available without needing to resort to loop-back connectors. Some of the more advanced USB sound cards can have problems not being detected on boot-up, which is not a problem with PCI devices.

[Polleke]

I have often heard of this (mostly in the advertising information for external sound cards), but in my experience with dozens of different sound cards I have never experienced any such problem on full size computers.
This is not the case with laptops however, and I have found that lap tops are very prone to interference from their power supply.

On the contrary, I can tell you I've had problems with this.... with both full size computers and laptops. But possibly that happens because I have a lot of other devices in use, and all linked to each other (in a live recording session; think of mixers, effects, compressors etc.). All our equipment is earthed. And the funny thing (especially with laptops!) is that some laptops must be earthed and some not, in order to avoid interference. The safest way, as said, is to run on the battery.
@ your other argument: sorry, I'm too much an end user and too less a computer engineer. I can't tell the technical ins and outs of sound cards. To me it is: if it works, it works. And some internal cards and laptops don't, that Ihave experienced in practice.

So there we are.... having two different point of views, thus a very confusing advice to Tukuniata

[steve]

Well we agree about interference from laptop power supplies, though I do know one person that uses a laptop, with on-board sound card and running from the power supply that has no trouble at all. I think he is something of an exception.

I have found that using DI boxes between a laptop and other equipment helps to reduce the power supply interference considerably (though I still think that on-board sound-cards on laptops are usually very poor, so with a laptop I would definitely go for external).

[musikman1]

RE: Hum from internal cards

I use an old Sound Blaster 128 card from WAY back when. My biz is a recording studio and we use the SB128 card to do all of our mastering for clients. We have a noise floor of approx -72db, and I've never experienced the hum problem.

HOWEVER, that doesn't mean that you are doing anything wrong. You might have one of those cheepie power supplies in your case that sell for less than $100.. My systems all use Antec Quattro 1000's and Enermaxx Galaxy DXX 1000's, which are uber RFI protected. Plus, we have them on dedicated circuits (nothing is plugged into that wiring EXCEPT the 3000W UPS, which then powers the computer..)

We have dual circuits in the studios, with a "RED" line (UPS, sensitive electronics only) and a "BLUE" line (amplifiers, fans, printers, monitors, etc). The RED lines are all 120V-30A because the 3000W APC UPS's require the larger circuit.

mm1

[TryThisOut]

It is the hardest question to answer. It all depends what you want to use with your sound card. However I am using SB Augity live. I know it
is pretty old but so far so good, I use that for simple and easy voice recording for podcast. To me it is really good enough