KVR Audio

kalimusic22 · Post by **kalimusic22** » Sat Apr 05, 2014 12:54 am

i am recording music.i have a simple setup using my pc ( asus sabertooth x58 motherboard ) a mobilr pre usb external soundcard, and two rockit 5 krk active monitors.
the m audio mobile pre soundcard im using is 16 bit.i would like to start recording in 24 bit.
i have the opportunity to purchase a creative x fi card for 30$ ...
which is a $ 100 less than any external card i can find with 24 bit recording options.
so, one of my questions is...
is it better for me to ditch this m audio mobile pre, $150 , 16 bit external card card and replace it with a 24 bit , internal creative xfi card?
i think the creative has good DAC built inside..perhaps better?
what are the reasons i should be looking at to decide this?
if you think its a good move, WHY?
also if you think its not a good move, please explain.
if i could upgrade to 24bit internal @ $35, instead of having to purchase a $150+ 24 bit external , i think that would only make sense.
im wondering why the external is so much more as well, and other than possible better dac inside, i can only think off the fact that internal noise will be picked up from an internal card and thats why the price is lower than externals??
someone please give me some advice and explain what they would do in my situation. ( moneys tight, i cannot afford another $150 external just to get 24bit..but i have no problem spending 35$ for it, but id rather not if the internal noise will be a huge factor and the dac in my external are that much better ...
THANKS in advance.I look forward to responses

RunBeerRun · Post by **RunBeerRun** » Sat Apr 05, 2014 1:41 am

Depends on whether you're recording plugins only, all inside the computer, or outside instruments through an audio cable, in which you could somewhat tell a difference.

Another thing is a $30 card is probably not going to do well at low latencies, so if you're recording in realtime it might suck. Not familiar with those cards though.

timobrien · Post by **timobrien** » Mon Apr 07, 2014 4:37 pm

Creative cards are GAMER cards. There is a reason it's only $30.

timobrien · Post by **timobrien** » Mon Apr 07, 2014 4:37 pm

Creative cards are GAMER cards. There is a reason it's only $30.

afreshcupofjoe · Post by **afreshcupofjoe** » Sun Apr 20, 2014 10:07 am

I agree with timobrien. Creative makes sound cards for gaming and multimedia playback. They are not intended for professional recording. It's definitely not an upgrade. Stick with the m audio mobile pre until you can afford something better.

Panphobia · Post by **Panphobia** » Tue Apr 22, 2014 9:07 pm

You can get an excellent external 24 bit card for $200 or less, especially with sales. I would save my pennies for a better card.

MadAnthony81 · Post by **MadAnthony81** » Tue Apr 22, 2014 11:31 pm

Ive heard stories that some sound cards cant even run some programs at all.

Personally my next Interface will be an M audio track plus. notice that the plus version is good on laptop batteries. its looks cool and has good clean specs. its on sale for 134 with software too at some places, or it was atleast.

cheers. i wouldn't buy the cheapy, probly wont work with a daw or vst's.

RunBeerRun · Post by **RunBeerRun** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 10:54 pm

Do you (above guy) mean the M-Track? Because I checked out the manuals when they were first released, wondering how they got the price so low, and they don't have drivers. They recommend Asio4all.

I have the old Fast Track Pro, which is still decent, since Avid took over the drivers bring up cpu usage, not worth it anymore.

liv · Post by **liv** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 11:25 pm

I'd say go with what you got and learn how to get the most out of it. In the meanwhile start reading reviews etc. to get an idea of what you want and what price range this is and then start saving for it. It will then be very rewarding when you buy this new piece of gear that you decided upon.
If you don't know rme you might want to start there.
http://www.rme-audio.de/en_index.php
Even if it's a year or so away it'll be worth getting something good.

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 11:46 pm

I used to use a Soundblaster back in the day and mixed in 16 bits :barf:

Process a sound one too many times, and it would just go to poop, no questions asked.

mhog · Post by **mhog** » Sat Apr 26, 2014 11:58 am

Creative has "good DAC built inside"? Where did you read that? As far as I remember, THAT is the issue and why people who wanted to record music avoided it and called it "crap". But it was more than 10 years ago, computers were much less powerful, there was even the latency issue and there was no "Asio for all" driver. Maybe nowadays things are different and the new "Creative" consumer's 30-40$ DAC audio boards are excellent? I don't know.

By the way... I understand you have to save money etc. But, come on... how can you pretend to spend only 30-40$ and get something "professional"? These kind of audio boards just work (for videogames, music, 3D dolby surround movies etc.). If you need something to record your instruments and/or voice, my advise is FOCUSRITE, which DAC and preamplifiers are very good (and you can hear the difference when you record external audio). Example: Scarlett 2i2 (150$). Less than 100$?... vintage products on some second hand market place and/or ebay. I found (and bought) a rather good firewire audio board for 60€.

pilgrim_heart · Post by **pilgrim_heart** » Tue Apr 29, 2014 1:00 pm

I wouldn't worry too much about getting 24-bit stuff. I think that stuff like driver stability and latency would likely be more important, latency info would be available from the manufacturer and for driver stability you could look around at various forums to see if people had any problems with whatever card you're looking at.

A quick thing on why bit resolution is unlikely to matter:
At the end of the day the stated resolution is likely to be whatever ENOB (Equivalent Number Of Bits) the ADC designer could get out of whatever oversampling etc. was being used which in plain english means that the resolution essentially is a measure of how much noise power is added by the ADC. This will really only be significant if all the preceding circuitry add less noise. IIRC consumer electronics would usually have a reference voltage of ~0.77 so divide that by 2^16 and you're already at a noise level somewhere around 1e-5 and (I'm basing this on intuition so if anyone has measurements or so that prove me wrong then I'd go with those instead) it seems pretty unlikely that the ADC noise would matter at those levels. I'm actually a bit sceptical about the utility of 24-bit in general since takes noise into some nV range and I find it hard to believe that one can actually make analog circuitry that won't make that completely insignificant. My electronics background is mainly in CMOS IC stuff though and that stuff seems to be pretty noisy in comparison with older technology so my intuitions about this might not hold for discrete, bipolar etc.

rod_zero · Post by **rod_zero** » Tue Apr 29, 2014 3:08 pm

Get an audio card designed for audio recording, Steinberg has some cheap ones http://www.thomann.de/gb/steinberg_ci1. ... c8b6c42120

audiobot202 · Post by **audiobot202** » Wed Apr 30, 2014 1:22 am

Not sure why everyone is so convinced that the DACs in a Creative card are crap. Maybe they're not so great in a $30 card, but int he Titanium HD, they're much much better than they ever were years ago. All depends on what money you have, what set up you have any why you record. I currently have a Titanium HD just because I needed a new card in a new PC and my old M audio doesn't have Windows 8 drivers. At this stage, there's nothing wrong with it. It includes ASIO drivers, 24 bit recording and good sound.
I'm just a hobbyist though. It all depends on what you want to do. Years ago the Creative Live was used by quite a lot of home based hobbyists with good results. These days, the Creative cards are even better. It's not pro, it won't have a ton of I/O, but again, all depends on what you need. Latency is just fine here.
The Xonar is reputed to have even better sound.

16 or 24 bit?sound card advice for home studio recording