Sound cards

[catachresis]

I confess that I'm not an extremely serious pc-based audio producer like Poko and Cd-orders, but my very limited experience has tended to support some of Poko's comments:

A) I was very keen to get a Terratec card about two years ago (I'm dublin based) but I found at the time that Terratec was resisting providing good Win2k drivers. I'm a loyal win2k-er, and this combined with the -- then -- premium price of the mid-range Terratec card prevented me from buying. A missed opportunity perhaps.

B) I got a TB Santa Cruz to replay the older SB Live! with daughter card. The Santa Cruz is a terrific sounding card for the money (in North America, Dell sell's em refurb still for around $60). The Santa Cruz's multi-function out-port has limited functionality for the serious audiophile and midi-producer, so not much good there. But still, it's a much higher standard of media card than the older SBs.

C) I just bought the following because it seemed intriguing and was a super deal for the price: the Onkyo SE-U55 external usb sound card. Technical details here:
hxxp://electronics.cnet.com/electronics/0-9400736-1304-7456226.html

Link to North American deal here [card retailed for $250/ sold here for $75 shipped]:
hxxp://wxw.jandr.com/JRProductPage.process?RestartFlow=t&Merchant_Id=1&Product_Code=ONK+SEU55&source=zdnet.datafeed.text.20020709

This card has what appear to be really good external ports for digital and analogue connection. Included software looks pretty mediocre, but is replaceable. 'Comes with cables. There is a retail usb-asio driver available to enhance its playing: I found the activating serial for the driver and if you search for 'asio' in these forums, you'll have it too.

 

[zver]

As you see I have many experiences to this and I can have a better opinion to this su

Thats modest!!!

 

[cdorders]

Sorry

 

[zver]

No probs m8

I had fun reading it----Good discussion btw (place to came when i need new soundcard)

 

[cobra88]

hi cdorders

can we put two sound card in the same PC ????

like we put yamaha and Audigy in the same time !!!

and if i can how they will work together ??? or i can select the sound card i need it ......... like choosing the Audigy for game and yamaha for editing ???


and please tel me the best sound card for gaming and best for audio editing and best for both ( i don't care about the price).


thank you and sorry for the stupid questions.........

 

[FortiTude]

i got a terratex dmx 6fire 24/96 in my pci slot, for listening to good music, gane sounds (with all the digital stuff) sound editing, all the important stuff
and i have an AC'97 crappy onboard sound enabled, which i use for my headset, for battlecom, teamspeak...
and everything works fine, i set the terratec to the preimary one and in these voice comm. progs i just selected the other one.
FortiTude

 

[cdorders]

Cobra88

Hi my friend. Mind that no question is meant to be stupid as we all learn from questions... Since you do not care about the money amount, you can find many Audio editing cards starting from 300 Euros, but I cannot claim that card "A" or card "B" is the best. Good value for money is the Terratec EWS-88MT, unique for midi and sequencing is the Yamaha SW-1000XG, for Dolby Digital Home Theater the Terratec SixPack 5.1 is a good value for money but you may find another Terratec at a bigger price with more features. For gaming, the Terratec DMX Fire and DMX XFire 1024 will do the job pretty well, as they support GeneralMidi, Audio Sensaura ans EAX 3D.
As for the combination of two soundcards in your PC, you can combine one, two or any number of soundcards you want as long as you have free PCI slots and free IRQs and system resources . BUT, note that the use of two (or more) soundcards of the same model may cause conflicts with the drivers as they will see more than one devices present at a system. A good combination is to use two soundcards and set the one as a main soundcard for gaming, Homr Theater and general use and the other one for Audio Proccessing. For example, you can use the Yamaha SW-1000XG as a main card and for midi sequencing (which has a unique line out signal in gold RCA plugs) and the Terratec EWS-88MT for Audio Editing (with CoolEdit Pro or Wavelab for instance). This pair makes one of the best combinations as the Yamaha DSP Factory Audio Card is discontinued... Anyway, according to your needs, you can find many combinations... Good Luck

 

[FortiTude]

one important thing:
don't buy the terratec soundsystem DMX if you use or will use win2k or xp
there are no drivers, because the producer of the sound chip didn't create them, so terratec can't supply them
i had that card first and when i upgraded to win2k i was shocked, but then a contacted the support and got the new dmx 6fire 24/96 in exchange (i had to pay the money the new costs more (dmx: 125 € 6fire: 250 € --> 125 €)
FortiTude