Beagle Sound Productions
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Sound Card Advice
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Latency:
Latency is important if you intend to monitor with real time effects (FX) such as amp sims for guitars or vocoders for voice, or if you intend to record MIDI while directly monitoring using softsynths such as Ivory Pianos or EZ Drummer (more about those specific softsynths later).
If you plan to monitor with real time FX or softsynths then you want the lowest latency possible. Latency is the time difference between when you press a key on the keyboard or hit a pad on an electronic drum kit and the time you hear the sound. It's also the difference between the time you strum your guitar and hear the sound with FX enabled in your DAW.
Latency can be as low as 2.5msec Round Trip Latency (all latency in and out of the computer accounted for) or can be very high such as 250msecs. for reference, 250msecs is a quarter of a second.
For further reference:
2.5msec would sound the same as if you were standing less than 3 feet from your amp when playing guitar or keyboard or singing.
250msec would be the same as if you were standing over 280 feet from your amp! That's quite a distance to try to sync your playing to!
Latency is not important (mostly) if you intend to monitor direct without real time FX and without softsynths. This can easily be done (unless you're a guitarist that insists he needs the amp sim "sound" to record with!). It can be done with a small mixer or if you have an external soundcard with mixer capabilities.
So, at this point, I'll simply throw out a starter card so that the impatient ones can get what they want and the rest can learn and make an informed decision.
For a starter card, my first recommendation is the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 - complete with a link to an online music store that carries them. They cost about $100, they have 2 analog inputs, 2 analog outputs and MIDI I/O as well as SPDIF I/O. These are PCI cards and they must be installed in an empty slot inside a desktop computer. Very solid drivers, very good A/D converters, excellent for the price.
* NOTE the addition below regarding m-audio soundcards and vista drivers - I no longer recommend m-audio soundcards if your operating system is Vista. See my full soundcard recommendation spreadsheet for details. However, m-audio has created EXCELLENT drivers for Win7 both 32bit and 64bit!