how much difference does a good sound card make?

[N.U.G.]

hey all,

I've recently heard that a good soundcard can make a big difference for music production.

I'm just rocking a Sound Blaster Live card and am considering upgrading if I think its worthwhile.

Can someone please advice me about what ways a good soundcard will improve music production? I mean will it make the soundfonts, vsti, samples etc. sound better or is it something else I'm missing.

Thanks for any advice dawgs

 

[J-UK]

I went from onboard sound to a terratec dmx6fire soundcard and though it isn't a top of the range card, it did make a big difference. It has good recording quality and the inputs on the front module are great, turntable input and a preamp in the card which made it really easy to sample from vinyl, midi in and out, digital, jack, line in and out. I would say that having a better soundcard does improve music production.

 

[Copenhagen]

A good soundcard will of course play your beats without "colouring them" where cheaper soundcards may be more bias and incl. noise. Also, good soundcards have low or zero latency.
However, a good soundcard won't help much if you have cheap speakers and amplifier as they may "colour" your beats instead. Good studio monitors and amplifier will do the trick there. I've tried making a beat at home and bringing it out to 2 friends. At one, the sound was better and at the other, the sound was worse...so it does make a difference.

 

[N.U.G.]

thanks J-UK and Copenhagen. What you said was very interesting. It sounds like a good soundcard is definitly worthwhile. I really need a new PC strictly for music production so I think I'll save up and make sure I buy a good soundcard with it.

I definitly want to get some good studio monitors like you suggested Copenhagen but am unsure about an amplifier. Do you have an amplifier hooked up to your PC or something like that?

 

[Copenhagen]

I do, but the best thing would probably be to get studio monitors with a build-in amplifier...not entirely sure though.

 

[vitaminman]

Hey,

Something else to consider is that most of the better cards have drivers written for them that offer features that the consumer cards don't, such as low latency softsynth playback and software monitoring.

If you're using a program like Cool Edit it probably won't matter because they only take advantage of the normal MME drivers. But if you're using something like Cubase, it really pays to find a card that has ASIO drivers written for it.

Also, most higher-end cards will offer 1/4" balanced inputs and outputs, a whole bunch of different clock rates and bit depths, muiltiple channels, DSP mixing and routing, plus a few other neat gadgets like ADAT and SPDIF ins and outs.

You may want to consider getting a card that comes with an external breakout box. The advantage here is that all the audio conversion is done outside the computer itself, which means that it will be less prone to pick up noise from the computer.

The disadvantage is that most of the nicer cards don't support Sound Fonts on the card itself like the Live! card does, you will have to load some sort of Sound Font virtual instrument from within your sequencer to play them. You will also miss having an onboard MIDI wavetable synth that a lot of games rely on for their sounds...if your computer is to be used strictly for audio though, you probably won't even care about this.

I have an M-Audio Delta 1010, by the way, and it works pretty well with Cubase SX.

Take care,

Nick

 

[N.U.G.]

Originally posted by Copenhagen
I do, but the best thing would probably be to get studio monitors with a build-in amplifier...not entirely sure though.

sounds good, I'll keep this in mind.


Vitaminman, thanks for the tips dude. I really don't know a lot about some of the more technical things you mentioned but I'm sure I'll learn a lot more about soundcards as I go. I appreciate the advice.

peace

 

[Copenhagen]

No problem, glad to help with whatever I can...

 

[klethusrulez]

i would love to get a phatt soundcard but for now i use a 20 dollars card and shit is not that bad so...the problems are more about latency and sync issues than about strictly the sound wich is a lil' bit more dirty and i like it!

 

[vitaminman]

Hey,

The problem with the 'dirty' soundcards is that you will ALWAYS have a bad sound. If you have one of the nicer soundcards, you can make them sound a little dirtier, or you can load an effect into your editors which dirty them up for you.

There is a BIG difference between 'dirty' and 'bad'.

Take care,

Nick