Good Budget Home Recording Sound Cards

[fustiar]

Okay i've read back about 10 thread pages or so looking for sound card tips...

Here is the situation. I need a sound card that will sound good recording vocals / guitars / bass / keyboards [not midi].

I have about $150 canadian dollars to spend. I probably will not be able to afford a specific recording soundcard.

My options are these:

Sound blaster 128
Sound blaster Live! [not platinum, and no breakout box]
Sound blaster audigy [again no breakout box]

Hercules Fortissimo III
Hercules Game Theater XP [comes with a breakout box]

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I've only seen the sound blaster live mentioned in a few threads. Sometimes with good things said about it and sometimes with bad things said about it...

Which should I invest in? The price range of these are $50 (sblive) to $150 (game theater xp)

One other thing... I also want the multimedia / gaming features of these sound cards so an expensive dedicated professional recording soundcard wouldn't necessarily work for me.

What do you think?

 

[the alumnus]

i would only recommend the soundblaster system if you are not afraid of working with software. i have an audigy, and getting all the software configured was a hassle. granted, i'm using windows 98 se, which is the lowest os it supports.

 

[The Wanderer]

you're not going to get good results with the criteris you've set for yourself. soundblasters suck for recording, and if youw ant decent ins and outs and qualty sound you need a breakout box.

so get two. get a SB now for you games and make shitty recordings til you can afford a layla or something.

 

[Strigoi]

The Echo Mia and M-Audio 2496 are around $180US, might be worth investing a little more for a better card. If you go with a creative card get the Audigy 2, it'll record at 24-bit 96kHz.

 

[Mattias the Bitch Boy]

Stay the FUCK away from Soundblasters, Creative can't do shit when it comes to recording. I owned an Audigy and I had nothing but trouble. I dunno about Audigy 2 but it probably sucks too. You can buy better soundcards for the same price. I, for example, have an Audiotrak Maya44. Your price range, simple stuff, not professional or anything, but good, although it only does 16 bit 48khz or something like that. It gets low latencies and all that good stuff.

 

[Nate The Great]

You can get an amazingly good M-Audio Audiophile soundcard for $150 US dollars. I'd suggest it over anything else in the price range. Don't even bother wasting your money on a Sound Blaster for recording.

Here's a link to the M-Audio site for the Audiophile:

http://www.midiman.com/products/m-audio/audiophile.php

Trust me. This is what you want for your budget. If you still can't afford it brand new, go find it on E-Bay.

 

[Strigoi]

Mattias, you're right about the original Audigy cards but if you read his post he's looking for a card that he can also use for gaming purposes.

The first Audigy cards had issues with VIA chipsets amongst others and only had 16-bit 48kHz recording. I've got an Audigy 2 and it works fine in my Athlon machine. I use an Mbox for recording but when I just work on drums I use the Audigy with Sonar 2. It's got the best audio quality of the current gaming/general use cards and has pretty low latency with the ASIO drivers.

But for what it's worth Creative has to lose the bloatware that comes with their cards. I just install drivers and leave the other crap on the disc.