Probably the best budget sound card is the e-mu 1616m. For the price nothing else really competes; it's got good AD/DA, a few ins and outs, preamps etc. If you dont need the extra ins, then the 1212m is ok, but just remember, its better to buy once.

Heheh. If its better to buy once, screw the 1616M. Give me a Rosetta 800 instead

I still think the 1212M is the best card you can get for less than 120 quid. The 1616M is the best you can get for less than 300 quid. The 1616M has nice preamps for the money and they sound quite good even when you use the full 60dB of gain.

You can get more and better but it'll cost ya.

One thing to note on the 1212M - the digital I/O comes on a separate daughter board so to get all the connectivity you have to have 2 free PCI slots. If this is a problem for you (i.e. you use a small form factor PC, or you have a stupidly fast graphics card and having another card in your case will impede airflow and melt your PC) then its just something to be aware of.

thanks to both replies, yea - the pci slot's was something i was wondering about, think my graphics card is a radeon x600 series (i think)

i have a couple of empty "brackets" on the back but have not opened my case up to see if there is actually slots for them inside.

will look into it and post in this thread if i still need more help.

thnx again!


EDIT: actually, i just realised i have a tv card at the back which i dont use at all, came with the pc. might just remove that and the one below it, not sure wot it is but it looks like the card i'm looking at has the same little "telephone lead" input. so could i just put the 2 parts of the 1212m in those as i dont use either?

Last edited by Spoonz on Mar-27-2007 at 14:26

But can most of the mentioned soundcards be connected with a 4 speakers + sobwoofer system like the Cambridge soundworks one or not? I don't think they are the good at all for this kind of use, but at least at the beginning I would still prefer not to upgrade them.

The telephone socket thing at the back of your PC is probably your modem or ADSL modem. If you use it for your internet connection don't take it out.

If you want to mix in surround sound or hook up your surround sound speakers at any time to your soundcard (i.e. to watch films) you need a soundcard with 6 outputs. 1 each for the front left speaker, front right, back left, back right, center speaker and 1 for the sub.

An EMU 1212M has 2 analogue outputs and a stereo digital input/output so you can't do this. You can't playback or record in true surround anyway. But thats consistant with nearly all soundcards on the budget end of the scale.

The EMU1616M has 8 analogue outs and billions of digital in/outs because of the ADAT and switchable S/PDIF / AES/EBU ports. So you could record and playback in true surround using that.

Mostly though, the more I/O a card has, the more the asking price is. Well sort of. A Rosetta 200 is jst 2 in 2 out but the convertors are stupidly awesome, the clocking is awesome and the preamps are awesome and recording my guitar through it gave me a warm fuzzy feeling in my loins.

And thats why people produce music right?

Right?

Last edited by Derivative on Mar-27-2007 at 16:37

Thanks for the reply, I think I will go for the M-Audio Delta 1010LT looks enough for the moment and have enough outputs (although unbalanced, but for a beginner I guess this is not such a problem or I am wrong?) to be used with my Cambridge's.
Yeah, I guess that is the right feeling.

haha interesting!



anyway... my computer is connected via a wireless card so that shouldnt be an issue...

the card i have is currently onboard 7.1 card but it is only connected via front speaker to the hi-fi... so i'm not getting true surround anyway really, i guess... this too, is not really going to be an issue for me...

it seems this card as ticked all boxes so far.

should there be anything else that may be a concern, just to help further on this i'll just post wot i use the computer for, generally:

music production - i'm new to this field so dont see a need for anythin greater

web design - non-audio related

minimal gaming - nothing that uses a lot of memory really (just simple flash games, ie: yahoo pool lol, sono ealygain at all)

watching videos - things like youtube, googe vids, etc... no real need for surround there - i only watch films on my dvd player - aint the same watching films on a pc screen to me lol

and just general web browsing

will i still be able to do all the above and should i hear a great improvement if i do buy the E-MU 1212M?

i plan on connecting my midi-keyboard which is 1 of my main reasons for deciding to upgrade, obviously improved sound quality would certianly be a great bonus.

thanks for all this help by the way, greatly appreciated

Some advice from an Emu owner: don't get one.

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quote:

Originally posted by Trancefxs Thanks for the reply, I think I will go for the M-Audio Delta 1010LT looks enough for the moment and have enough outputs (although unbalanced, but for a beginner I guess this is not such a problem or I am wrong?) to be used with my Cambridge's. Yeah, I guess that is the right feeling.

Some advice from an M-Audio owner: don't get one

quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut Some advice from an Emu owner: don't get one.

too late hehe, it's already ordered :| - will just send it back tho if there are any problems. shouldnt be an issue if that's the case having read the returns policy before ordering lol

quote:

Heheh. If its better to buy once, screw the 1616M. Give me a Rosetta 800 instead

Some advice from Rme/Rosetta owner - get one

quote:

Originally posted by DJDIRTY Some advice from Rme/Rosetta owner - get one

hahahaa

ditto