Importance of a Good Sound Card???

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-- Importance of a Good Sound Card???

Posted by djSwank on Sep-28-2009 13:43:

Importance of a Good Sound Card???

I'm wondering how critical and important having a good sound card is and how it can have an impact on music production???

I'm having a hard time visualizing how it could make a difference if one is to work strictly in software. When would the sound card even come into play? Is it more critical to have if you are actually recording in audio into your DAW?

Right now, I'm just using my standard built in Apple soundcard with a line out to my soundsystem. I'm trying to determine whether it makes sense to purchase a real soundcard but I'm not really seeing the benefits?

Posted by Zak McKracken on Sep-28-2009 16:04:

its pretty important. recording or not.

Posted by aLviNx80 on Sep-28-2009 16:09:

It's a must.. you will run into latency issues without it

Posted by owien on Sep-28-2009 16:22:

well i'm or was running the built in soundcard on my pc and just up graded and found a small but better improvement. you will find that changing sound cards allows you to hear more and take the load of your pc.

Posted by Zak McKracken on Sep-28-2009 16:35:

quote:
Originally posted by aLviNx80
It's a must.. you will run into latency issues without it

the problem isnt latency but the soundquality, he obviously doenst record any external gear so hes latency can stand at 5096 samples and he wouldnt have any problems with that.

Posted by Mr.Mystery on Sep-28-2009 17:28:

I'd say good monitors are more important than the soundcard. I've used both high-end soundcards and onboard soundcards and the only major difference is the latency, really - and since I don't do any live recording or anything like that it's not really an issue at all.

(Disclaimer: Obviously I know the answer isn't as straightforward as that, but whatever...)

Posted by Zak McKracken on Sep-28-2009 18:15:

i always find those onboards minijack outs muddy.

Posted by Zild on Sep-28-2009 18:49:

It is important, but if you aren't recording anything a cheap one like some M-audio stuff will work perfectly.

Posted by kitphillips on Sep-29-2009 11:46:

quote:
Originally posted by Mr.Mystery
I'd say good monitors are more important than the soundcard. I've used both high-end soundcards and onboard soundcards and the only major difference is the latency, really - and since I don't do any live recording or anything like that it's not really an issue at all.

(Disclaimer: Obviously I know the answer isn't as straightforward as that, but whatever...)

Surprised you'd say that. I'm yet to find an onboard sound card which doesn't completely obscure the sound of whatever I'm playing through it. I won't even listen to MP3s through mine any more.

Posted by dannib on Sep-29-2009 11:59:

Yes, the difference between using an onboard soundcard and even the cheapest m-audio card for example is night and day. Onboard sound cards are almost unuseable if you want to actually hear what you are doing. The best monitors in the world will sound like crap through an onboard soundcard.

Posted by Mr.Mystery on Sep-29-2009 12:20:

quote:
Originally posted by kitphillips
Surprised you'd say that. I'm yet to find an onboard sound card which doesn't completely obscure the sound of whatever I'm playing through it. I won't even listen to MP3s through mine any more.

There is a difference, sure, but the speakers/monitors you use make a much bigger difference, IMO.

Posted by Acton on Sep-29-2009 12:24:

quote:
Originally posted by Mr.Mystery
I'd say good monitors are more important than the soundcard.

I would definitely say this as well.

I've produced tracks on a 'standard' soundcard with great monitors and have produced some great results. I have also done tracks on a 'better' soundcard with the same monitors, and....well, they produced some great results!!

There wasn't much difference if I'm honest.

Posted by DJ RANN on Sep-29-2009 13:08:

I agree that speakers will make a bigger difference in grand scheme of things but if you do already have even decent very entry level speakers, you'll hear the difference a decent card can make.

Obviously some on board soundcards are utter turd and should be disabled in BIOS before ever allowing a signal to be tranduced but the newer mac ones aren't that bad so in terms of priority, the speaker upgrade should come first.

There are several improvements a soundcard will offer:

Latency - this one is obvious but it does also affect genera timing of you project especially if using anything external, with samples and midi.

Performance - especially in the case of PC's, a soundcard with decent drivers will take the load off you CPU which ultimately lets you do more etc.

I/O - you can connect more, duh.

Quality - going from the mac built in sound to and Audiofire 4 was a serious and noticeable upgrade in terms of clarity. Wierdly, I heard more problems with previous projects that I thought were OK and a lfair amount of them even had to do with timing issues so I feel quality issues are affected on many levels by the quality of your soundcard.

Basically, if you have OK monitors then go for a better soundcard but if you're monitoring though your $100 hifi then really think about monitors first before buying a soundcard.

Posted by alanzo on Sep-29-2009 13:20:

I'd imagine even a standard apple card will support ASIO. Just be sure that's enabled in your audio workstation software.

Other than that, if you're not recording, the only other thing that matters is your digital audio converter. That's the thing that converts the digital audio to analog so it can be played through your speakers or headphones. There isn't a *huge* difference there, but it's worth upgrading if you have a quite impressive speaker set.