|
| quote: | Originally posted by Nyquist_Theorem
Serp's got it right (oi dave!  ) - non-ASIO sound cards (ie onboard sound, or the sound cards that 99% of pre-built computers come with) are an arsepain to work with because of their horrific audio latency (any ISA card from the mid-80s will have acceptable MIDI latency for external devices, heck MIDI's slower than a 56k modem in terms of baud/bit rate). For any serious audio production you're going to be heaps happier with an ASIO2-able soundcard. Needn't be expensive, either; that dude that bought me one spring roll too many on Tuesday is also the Australian distributor of M-Audio, makers of the Revolution 7.1, which is a nice, inexpensive (like not much more than $100 iirc) 24/96 sound card with rock-solid ASIO support and more-than-good-enough audio quality at both the input and output stages. Not that much more gets you a quality outboard box (firewire or USB2) with multiple ins and/or outs.
With a proper ASIO sound card, every tweak of the controls on-screen will result in an instant (<10ms) change in timbre, in comparison to non-ASIO (ie onboard/consumer kit) stuff. Basically ASIO means that there's no delay between when you ask the computer to do something to the sound that's being generated and when it gets done.
All of which is not to say that you can't produce tracks with non-ASIO gear; when working with soft synths entirely, the digital-to-analog (playback) stage of your sound card (and in fact the whole ASIO thing) is only a factor for monitoring while you're composing, since the actual rendering is done in software by the host CPU for most audio packages (Protools, I think, can render thru Digi hardware, but still, no digital-to-analog conversion until the CD is played in the CDJ). That said, I'd rather piss on an electric fence than try to play a softsynth via MIDI on a non-ASIO (ie 500ms+ latency) soundcard. |
exactly dude, couldn't have said it better myself
___________________
serpmusic.com
|
