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I'm getting a new, high powered PC for my DAW projects. I use lots of VSL, as well as EW, and other librarires.. I will have 6 cores, 64G ram and 2 1T SSD disks.
Can somebody recommend a good sound card? I used to use the M-Audio 2496 on my old machine and it worked well, but now it's a legacy product. Ideas?
Thanks!
I'm getting a new, high powered PC for my DAW projects. I use lots of VSL, as well as EW, and other librarires.. I will have 6 cores, 64G ram and 2 1T SSD disks.
Can somebody recommend a good sound card? I used to use the M-Audio 2496 on my old machine and it worked well, but now it's a legacy product. Ideas?
Thanks!
It might be a good idea to give people an idea of your budget. That will affect their recommendations.
Also, how many inputs/outputs will you need? Are you going to be recording in stereo, or are you looking to do 5.1 surround? What would be "best" depends on what you will actually need.
What can be said at this point is that for driver stability the RME line is a known good thing, but those cards are not on the "budget" side of things.
Thanks for your replies. I will be doing no studio recording at all, all the inputs and effects are from the VI's within DP. It's basically for me to listen to my simulations as I work. I have a good set of Sennheiser headphones and a decent pair of monitors. Budget is mid range. Give that I basically don't need more a good quality stereo analog output, I can buy something good, but I'm not going to spend as much on the sound card as on the whole computer!
I should mention that this is for "classical" music, not pop or rock.
Thanks again!
Since you're working in the box exclusively the most important thing to have is a low latency, stable driver. There's a comprehensive comparison-thread here:
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/618474-audio-interface-low-latency-performance-data-base-23.html
Usually RME gets a lot of praise for their rock solid drivers, and the linked chart shows it to be true. But their interfaces are rather expensive. The low-cost interface that charted highest - and well above some of the much pricier RME interfaces - is the Esi Juli@ Xte. It has only the very basic inputs/outputs, no bells and whistles, but for me it has been reliable and it gives very low latency. Be aware that you'd need a monitor controller with a headphone output/headphone amp though, as the Juli@ doesn't have a dedicated headphone output.
I like you don't do any recording, and I ended up with the Steinberg UR22 for $149. It's built VERY solid, works great for my purposes.
The only annoyance is that sometimes I get USB conflicts (which I don't understand), so I have to restart my computer in order for Cubase to recognize it. But I don't think that has anything to do with the UR22, it's an unexplained problem with my computer.
Still, with all the USB peripherals that can come into play with DAW work (USB breath controller, for example), if I had it to do over again I might go with an internal card, which you suggested was your intent.
You may have a look on such a thing...
http://us.focusrite.com/usb-audio-interfaces/forte
this or Roland QuadCapture
