Sound hardware roundup
 

PC users - what kind of audio set up do you have for your editing/mixing? Sound card, external mixers, software, etc.

Creatve is the most popular consumer, I may pick up the Audigy Platinum but undecided on the internal LiveDrive or the breakout box. The breakout would be less suseptable to interferance, but I'm wondering if it's really worth the $90 CDN price difference. I'll make good use of the Firewire, mic, Aux RCA, and MIDI inputs.

I'm not much into audio myself. But what I hear from most people
who want to do a bit more with audio (music, film) is to go with a
"serious" soundcard, not a consumer product....

There are however some interesting drivers that enable all
sort of more advanced stuff with creative cards (NOT with the
extigy because it is USB and not a PCI card!!), like ASIO etc.
Check that out here: www.kxproject.com

Good luck with your choice.

p.s. a funny thing that the driver above tells is
that the chips used for the soundblasters rear
channels is of much better quality than the front
channels. So it by default swaps those channels
for a higher quality. Sweet.

My studio is a full-fledged audio studio, and I'm adding the video into it, so my card might be a little more powerful than what you're looking for, but I use the Echo Layla24 (www.echoaudio.com) and it's wonderful. It's got WDM/ASIO/GSIF drivers that have excellent latency times, plus the analog inputs are 24bit 96khz capable, which will allow you to handle pretty much any audio you might want to import.

HTH

-Eric

Eric
 

What kind of price would something like the Layla go for? My budget as it stands right now would probably only cover the consumer level. The video component itself is costing a lot of $ :)

I believe I paid $700 or $800 for my Layla... but this was about a year ago.. so that price might have come down.

I know m-audio has a similar and competing product called teh delta1010 which might only be about $500 with similar specs.


mind you, both of these products have support for midi in/out/thru, s/pdif input/output, 8 analog inputs and 8 analog outputs (the layla also has ADAT)... this might be more than you need.

maybe the audiophile2496 (I think its called) or the delta 44 might be more what you're looking for.. I bet those cost between 200-300 and are pretty professional quality audio cards.
Fewer number of inputs and outputs, but have high quallity DAC's in them.


the delta44 can be found at m-audio's site, and I'm not sure the website of the audiophile. (but google will know :))

HTH

-Eric

Try the forums at Harmony Central it's a musician's site

http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums/

Specifically, you'll want to go to the Recording forums
http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?forumid=9

Lots of hardcore amateurs and professional sound people and engineers - who are up to date on the latest and greatest recording hardware for the PC. You'll get some very in depth advice about anything audio and probably more than you ever wanted to know about microphones. They'll know what you're looking for.