External Sound Cards

Remus

Hey all,

I'm looking to purchase myself an external sound card. I went to a music store to chat to someone last week and the "help" I got was well... insufficient.

All the lad was able to show me was a Line 6 POD Studio UX2... which seems like a whole TON of overkill. The bottom line is this, I am in NO WAY looking to make professional (semi?) recordings of myself. The whole point of this exercise is to be able to crit myself, and improve my playing. My first recordings were purely by miccing the amp with a cheap PC mic. It worked, but as I'm sure you can attain didn't sound great.

I then plugged my amp directly into the line in on my pc, which also worked... but for the latency... reading up and chatting to people basically pointed me in the direction of an external USB or firewire sound card...

but now where? any suggestions for a reasonably priced one? what to avoid? what I should be looking out for? should I rather just buy a semi-decent mic?

Cheers

AlanRatcliffe

Just get yourself a decent, brand name (ESI, Roland, M-Audio) 2-in, 2-out device, preferably with at least one mic input. If your amp has a speaker simulated line out, you don't strictly need the mic input, but guaranteed if you have one you will probably end up using it. Even the entry level stuff in the brand name ranges tend to sound quite good, paying more gets you more features and more in and outputs.

Internal will be cheaper (not needing a box makes the price down) and latency will almost always be lower than an external. Externals you can plug it into any computer easily and the better ones will have an XLR mic input.

Garth-S

You could also look at a usb condenser mic (http://www.muz.co.za/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=115_118_1276&products_id=3604) or a simple guitar interface (http://www.muz.co.za/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=115_117&products_id=1483)

JohnnyReggae

I wanted to do exactly the same thing, so on the advice from a friend who is a sound engineer I bought a simple 2in/2out external usb sound card from Paul Bothners in Cape Town, http://www.roland.com/products/en/UA-1X/index.html

Works really well and have managed to get the latency down to under 10ms which when using Cubase is good enough to play and not be affected by the latency.

[deleted]

Well, talk about getting 'insufficient' advice from a salesman. I got completely contradictory advice. To cut a long story short (if I can) I was advised to get an Edirol something -or -other, which was all fine and dandy. Then I was told, "Pah! Edirol, and Behringer for that matter too. Get this Omega Lexicon (the one which has clearly been used, most likely sent back) or this Tascom (also missing it's cd and manual)". So I take it Edirol is not as inferior as it was made out to be. If anyone would like to redeem this salesman and confirm his statements they're welcome to.

AlanRatcliffe

Sales folk will often tell you that whatever they make the most commission on is the best - usually their own imports. ?

The Edirol stuff is great - I use an Edirol UA-25 on my laptop for guitar rig. It's feature packed, has a good sound quality and the software drivers from Roland/Edirol are always rock-solid and stable. Many of their interfaces come with light versions of Cakewalk Sonar.

Behringer are cheap and cheerful. As with most of their product ranges, buy them if you are on a tight budget, but don't expect the same kind of quality or reliability as the bigger brands.

Lexicon have great sound quality (their mic pres are wonderful). There have been many reports of driver problems with them though.

The M-Audio stuff is also well worth a look in the same kind of price ranges as Edirol. Some of their interfaces come standard with ProTools LE, the light version of Protools - the industry standard recording software (not as good on the MIDI side as Sonar or Cubase though).

Also, the ESI (Egosys) interfaces are a nice balance between quality and price. I have two of them.

JohnnyReggae

Viccy wrote Well, talk about getting 'insufficient' advice from a salesman. I got completely contradictory advice. To cut a long story short (if I can) I was advised to get an Edirol something -or -other, which was all fine and dandy. Then I was told, "Pah! Edirol, and Behringer for that matter too. Get this Omega Lexicon (the one which has clearly been used, most likely sent back) or this Tascom (also missing it's cd and manual)". So I take it Edirol is not as inferior as it was made out to be. If anyone would like to redeem this salesman and confirm his statements they're welcome to.

The Edirol is great for what I need and the price I paid. I have no problems with it what so ever. Since joining the forum I've got some motivation back to practice more and have been messing around with recording some of my playing lately, and the little Edirol rocks for me.

[deleted]

Thanks guys, you've set my mind at ease. Next time you hear from me I will be the proud owner of an Edirol.