KVR Audio

orlandopiano · Post by **orlandopiano** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 4:31 pm

$200 is my spending limit for a new soundcard, and I've found both Mackie Onyx Satellite and the M-Audio Audiophile 192 in that range. Can you recommend others?

My use for this will be the memory hog Vienna Instruments, and it must be low latency.

Dominus · Post by **Dominus** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 4:54 pm

While I use the Mackie Onyx Satellite myself, the Audiophile has more robust drivers. You might also want to look at the M-Audio Delta 1010LT, that's $200, and will give you more I/O than the Audiophile 192.

orlandopiano · Post by **orlandopiano** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 10:26 pm

Dominus wrote:While I use the Mackie Onyx Satellite myself, the Audiophile has more robust drivers. You might also want to look at the M-Audio Delta 1010LT, that's $200, and will give you more I/O than the Audiophile 192.

Will a firewire card like the Mackie have more latency than a PCI card like the M-Audio? I will be playing a lot of classical piano (VST) so even a miniscule amount of latency is a problem.

Also the number of I/O is not important to me. I don't plan to use more than 1 at a time, MAYBE 2. And again, it's almost 100% for the Vienna Instruments sound library, probably no real audio recording save for an occasional voice track.

living sounds · Post by **living sounds** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 10:34 pm

Emu 1212m, best converters for the money. Latency should be OK as long as you've got a fast computer.

butter · Post by **butter** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 10:45 pm

Second the EMU for the converters. I found this card to be way more stable than the FW410 that I had switched to. That thing wouldn't sync to the host samplerate, the drivers would drop out all the time in Cubase, etc etc...

geroyannis · Post by **geroyannis** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 11:05 pm

+1 for Emu 1212m. The best card for much more than $200, really.

ObsoleteAcc99 · Post by **ObsoleteAcc99** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 11:23 pm

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orlandopiano · Post by **orlandopiano** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 2:20 am

geroyannis wrote:+1 for Emu 1212m. The best card for much more than $200, really.

I guess I was just drawn to the Mackie Onyx because it bundles a complete version of Tracktion 2 (yes I'm still using Tracktion 1!) and not too long ago was a $400 piece of gear. If I knew latency wouldn't be a problem with this Onyx, I think I'm headed that way. Can any Onyx users chime in on this?

kadar · Post by **kadar** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 3:09 am

Audiophile 2496...this is not my sound card but it should serve your purpose

chrisharang · Post by **chrisharang** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 5:49 pm

+1 for the M-Audio Audiophile 192 (as long as you only need 1 set of ins/outs)

GHOST19 · Post by **GHOST19** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 6:23 pm

The terratec phase 22 works flawlessly for me.

Lunch Money · Post by **Lunch Money** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 6:28 pm

Latency isn't a problem with the Onyx. I have occasional issues with the drivers, which don't seem to like to switch between DirectSound (eg. I'm checking out a YouTube video) and ASIO (switch back to my sequencer to do some mucking) all the time. If you won't find yourself in that situation often, it's a great piece of kit.

I had an Audiophile 24/96, though, and you simply can't beat its mature and stable drivers. I can't speak for any of the other devices.

jackson · Post by **jackson** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 6:36 pm

butter wrote:Second the EMU for the converters. I found this card to be way more stable than the FW410 that I had switched to. That thing wouldn't sync to the host samplerate, the drivers would drop out all the time in Cubase, etc etc...

Just for the record, I've had none of those problems with my FW410.

Cosmic Bandito · Post by **Cosmic Bandito** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 6:57 pm

1212M on fresh clean install of Windows!

Michael Allan Cumming · Wed Apr 11, 2007 2:10 am

Audiophile all the way. One of the leading cards as far as bang for buck.

Aside from needing more ins/outs you'll never need to upgrade. Amazing latency, pristine sound, SPDIF, balanced io, it's a monster of a card.

Best sound card under $200 ?