Hello,
I'm thinking of buying an Audigy 2 soundcard, but i read that there's a problem with using ASIO drivers with Cubase and other audio programs. Is the fact that ASIO works on 16kb/48kHz a problem with Cubase,Acid, etc...? Anyone have any experience?
thanx

I have an Audigy 2. I would not buy another one at this point.
- The drivers were flaky - particularly the XP ASIO drivers. I would regularly get BSOD's with them, they finally got it together in May or June 2003 (about six months, I think, after the card came out).

- The ASIO drivers will only do 48K and 96K. By comparison, CD's are recorded at 44.1K, and a lot of (older) VSTI only understand 44.1K. These VSTI will sound off-pitch by about a note (it seems to me that Dreamstation had this problem, among others).

I'm using ASIO4ALL to translate 44.1K ASIO to WDM. It's ok, but I would probably look at an Echo Mia MIDI (for example) instead.

Audigy2 are good game cards, and may be good for sound reproduction/home theatre uses, but for making music, they're mediocre at best. I think EW summed it up best in his sig quote - "Friends don't let friends buy Creative".

Doug

I don't use that sig anymore ,but it still holds true.
Mediocre at best drivers,a locked sample rate and intrusive supporting software(I had 300+ registry errors to fix up after the last Creative uninstall I did using their own uninstaller),and all I can say is;
"Friends don't let friends buy Creative"
ew

I have an Audigy 2 Platinum Pro. Sometimes I think that I am the only one who actually likes this card. Anyway, I love it! It only works at 48k, but that is no problem for the way I work. The built-in hardware effects and Soundfonts work great with Sonar 2. Latency is stable down to around 2 ms which is great for recording audio with VST effects like Amplitube on guitars. I master everything at 24 bit 48k and use Sony CD Architect for writing CDs. CD Architect does sample and bitrate conversions on the fly so this is no problem. Maybe if I wasn't using CD Architect, the sample rate issue would bother me more, but CD Architect is an incredible program. Would I buy another Audigy 2? Sure, it's high performance and way cheaper than the competition.

i would shop around if you want a more serious music card
i switched to the audiophile 2496 recently and aside from being a little cheaper i am now in my studio heaven i hit a key it plays,no more key stroke/dog walk/keysound

good luck and may you be happy with whatever you decide

I wouldn't buy a SoundBlaster. The M-Audio cards are much better quality, and geared for studio work and fairly inexpensive...

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.list&ID=pciinte rfaces

I have a Delta 1010LT myself.

The cards don't have the in built sound processing that the soundblaster cards have, or the soundfont support, but realistically for studio work the Soundblasters DSP's are no good (they're ok for games), and free soundfont VST instruments are available which are much more versatile. The M-Audio's A/D and D/A converters, I think, are much better, and I've had no problems with using it with Cubase.

Ben

I checked out the Audiphile cards, really impressive for quite a small price. The only problem is that i'd have to buy a mixer aswell which would total me at around $500! Anyone know how the Terratec Phase 22 works? I mean can it be used as a normal soundcard (games etc) as well as for music production, etc...

$500

You can pick up a small brand new Analogue Mixing desk for less that $100 ... like
http://www.behringer.com/UB802/index.cfm?lang=ENG
only... $69.99 ...

Ben

Think again. Ew's not the only one i have seen bashing that quote around the net, there are many unsatisfied audigy users.

I still have a SBLive! in my system, which i had about 4-5 years ago. It was decent enough at the time and gets me through my sequencing tasks. Luckily i am soon to be getting an EMU 1820m in three weeks. The Audigy and Live both suffer from what is known as resampling. They both resample everything to 48khz, so no matter what goes through it you end up with artifacts. I think the Audigy2 can handle 48khz and 96khz, but not really that flexible. There are endless forum topics on Audigy's just do a quick search on Google.

There are many other better and less expensive cards for audio production. Try these:

EMU 1212m
M-Audio Audiophile 24/96
Terratec DMX 6Fire or Phase 22

I have an Audigy 2 card. However for some reason, the mixer locks out on XP ( after I downloaded the updates from MS) and I can't access it unless I reinstall it...but now it won't even do that. The card still works however and I can access the ASIO panel in my host apps.

BUT

I was wondering if I should install those free ASIO drivers ( KX project) or the free ASIO on the Spring CM disc?

Would this get me better latency?

TC

I also have a crappy SB card. I get 5ms latency with the Kx drivers. Kx can however change between 44,1 and 48khz, for those VSTi that won´t work with 48khz.

I hate the card though, mostly becouse it´s locked to 48khz so it resamples the output.