Audio interface/sound card-what do you use for recording?

  On 10/16/2012 at 4:46 PM, kokeboka said:

Actual audible sound quality differences, with everything else the same but the soundcard?

  Quote

Do you reckon it's the build quality and converters, or just the fact that the m-box is an older unit?

From what I've heard AD converters have come a long way in the last 5-10 years.

  On 10/16/2012 at 5:43 PM, psn said:

  On 10/16/2012 at 4:46 PM, kokeboka said:

Actual audible sound quality differences, with everything else the same but the soundcard?

Yes, as in Are You Fucking Kidding Me?

I had a similar experience with some guitar I recorded. I put it through some nice clean preamps and then into my Sony recorder and my Echo Audiofire simultaneously. It was honestly just strange how dead and unhappy the Echo sounded. I'm sure there are even more dramatic differences out there. I got the Babyface soon after and am very glad I did.

Sorry money's getting you down Jaf, it's a shame to have an Andromeda and not enjoy recording with it! I'd even donate one of my soundcards to the cause as it's probably going to be barely worth it to sell them.

... and to complete the Focusrite trilogy I'm on an 8i6:

As forced to swap from an Echo Audiofire 4 when my new Sony laptop thought it'd be a good idea to be pretty much incompatible with any Firewire device ...

Sound quality is ace, and is stable as stable can be but I can't for the life of me work out the routing software for it (I'm trying to record the output mix for things like sampling Youtube videos etc.)

Yes I like the look of the focusrite cards, my mate has a saffire pro 14 which had really decent quality.audio. Nice and spacious sound.

My emu 0404 turns into a ring modded dalek after 20 seconds - 5 mins while recording, I've tried every setting on it, buffer increase/decrease , latency settings, bit depth, no luck. Think they're dodgy asio drivers, and the 0404 series is no longer supported by Emu.

  On 10/16/2012 at 6:12 PM, A/D said:

  On 10/16/2012 at 5:43 PM, psn said:

  On 10/16/2012 at 4:46 PM, kokeboka said:

Actual audible sound quality differences, with everything else the same but the soundcard?

Yes, as in Are You Fucking Kidding Me?

I had a similar experience with some guitar I recorded. I put it through some nice clean preamps and then into my Sony recorder and my Echo Audiofire simultaneously. It was honestly just strange how dead and unhappy the Echo sounded. I'm sure there are even more dramatic differences out there. I got the Babyface soon after and am very glad I did.

 

Sorry money's getting you down Jaf, it's a shame to have an Andromeda and not enjoy recording with it! I'd even donate one of my soundcards to the cause as it's probably going to be barely worth it to sell them.

This is very charitable of you A/D, I don't know what to say. If you have no luck selling it I' be very interested in arranging a trade or something, just had a look at the specs on the Echo audiofire card, sounds a hell of alot more inspiring than my current lot. Let me know;-)

  On 10/16/2012 at 2:43 PM, lin said:

Apogee Duet here, the first version. Pretty good converters, pristine audio quality you can rely on for both recording and monitoring/mixing. Duet 2's are supposed to be better. If you don't have a mac, check RME's.

I have the first Duet, too. It worked brilliantly for years, but OS X Lion and Mountain Lion have made it pretty unreliable.

Could use an upgrade with some MIDI capabilities, but I love Apogee's audio quality.

  On 10/16/2012 at 3:47 PM, chunky said:

honest question: how are these gadgets better thanthe typical soundblaster type of cards?

mostly the quality of the components used. soundblasters et al often have poor qualty ins and outs leading to lots of noise on the signal, the A/D D/A converters are likely to be inferior again leading to loss of quality and frequencies, same goes for the internal amp section etc etc. basically they're just not as good. nor (in my experience) do they last very long with heavy use.

MOTU AudioExpress

I've been using one of these for the past couple years:

And it's been really great. But, recently I decided I need more I/O and I found a good deal on this:

Is anyone interested in buying a Fireface UC in great condition?

Been using Aardvark Direct Pro 24/96 in desktop for nearly 10 yrs.

recently bought a m-audio Fast Track Ultra to have a usb interface for my laptop, and it also works great.

  On 10/17/2012 at 3:44 AM, DerWaschbar said:

I've been using one of these for the past couple years:

 

And it's been really great. But, recently I decided I need more I/O and I found a good deal on this:

Is anyone interested in buying a Fireface UC in great condition?

What would you sell it for? Also how do you access the midi ports?

That ssl box looks like the titees.

  On 10/16/2012 at 7:35 PM, baph said:

  On 10/16/2012 at 2:43 PM, lin said:

Apogee Duet here, the first version. Pretty good converters, pristine audio quality you can rely on for both recording and monitoring/mixing. Duet 2's are supposed to be better. If you don't have a mac, check RME's.

 

I have the first Duet, too. It worked brilliantly for years, but OS X Lion and Mountain Lion have made it pretty unreliable.

 

Could use an upgrade with some MIDI capabilities, but I love Apogee's audio quality.

I'm still on 10.6.8 here so it's still damn stable. And all my MIDI is over usb, so that's fine to me.

I have to update my monitoring chain in a not so distant future. Even though I love Apogee, I might go for a non-mac exclusive soundcard/DA. I'm a bit scared by Apple's "1 OS a year" new policy..

I'll certainly go for Neumann KH120 (and some Mixcubes).

And I'm seriously considering the Dangerous Music Source, which looks like a fantastic piece of gear.

i use a tascam us-122l. it was the cheapest audio interface in the store. i enjoy it greatly and think it sounds pretty nice, but as a disclaimer, i'm no audiophile

  On 10/16/2012 at 7:23 PM, Jaffa said:

Yes I like the look of the focusrite cards, my mate has a saffire pro 14 which had really decent quality.audio. Nice and spacious sound.

 

i highly recommend them. had mine for almost a year. No problems whatsoever, and im using win7 64 (ive seen a lot of complaints with soundcards not working with win 7-64 bit).

I'm using an M-Audio Delta 44 at the moment, but want to get a RME MultiFace II with PCIe card and maybe later a cardbus interface.