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The SBLive and other consumer cards don't have good A/D converters. You can spend thousands on a good one. However, the Delta line of interfaces from m-audio have a good reputation for low-end DAWs.

If you've already got a capable computer system, look at a Delta 44 and Cakewalk Home Studio 2004 (or Sonar 3, if you have the money). It would be much cheaper than a comparable analog system. Be careful, though - home studios are a big money pit. :)

Sure the SB Live it's not über-pro, but isn't that bad either. In fact I'd say it's the best entry-level card around

The Live is significantly noisier than the TB Santa Cruz, if you want to compare consumer cards. The "best entry-level card around" (for home recording) is probably the Audiophile 2496.

The Live pretty much sucks for anything other than gaming.

Actually, M-Audio does, and they're a major player in the pro/semi-pro-audio market.

Listening to the differences in the different types of speakers and monitors working at a Guitar Center over the holidays, I was blown away by the sound quality of some of the studio monitors in their Pro-Audio department, and then comparing them to the high-end home-theater gear at the Magnolia Hi-fi just down the street.

You will get a lot more bang for your buck with a good set of monitors while only taking fraction of the space. Check out the Event TR series or M-Audio's line. Most decent music equipment stores like Guitar Center should have some demos.

As far as software goes, Office v.X runs better on my PB than Office XP on my universities new 2.4Ghz Dells. I suppose most people wouldn't notice the difference, but I've been using Office since its Win3.1 days and I notice the little things. For music software, I pretty much only use iTunes right now, but Garageband looks sweet and I'm going to be buying a new guitar and some new M-Audio gear soon, so I'll know more in the future.

For Safari, I should point out that I have Jaguar 10.2.8 and Safari 1.0.1, I don't notice any slow downs with SSL sites, but I do notice heavy slowdowns on flash intensive sites, like IGN (who has become worse over the years instead of better). Most of the time for that website, I use Mozilla or OmniWeb 5 Beta 2 and it loads much much faster. I suspect that the Flash in Safari is much faster since the release of Panther. I decided that I would just wait until 10.4 before I upgrade because 10.3 came out a few weeks after I bought my PB and Apple didn't give me a free upgrade (I think I missed the cutoff by a week or so), and 10.2.8 works well enough.

Hope this helps. At this point, I'd say just wait until the new rev. is released. It shouldn't be too much longer. If you have any other questions, feel free to email me.

Amigori

"GarageBand has a very short list (20) [apple.com] of compatible MIDI interfaces, all high-end numbers from the likes of MOTU and DigiDesign."

Actually it supports the cheapest (but still great) usb midi interface around, the midiman (m-audio) Midisport Uno. Its $39 with no haggling at Guitar Center.

I tried to buy one last week at the Tyson's Corner VA Apple Store, but they said that they were all out of them.

I called back a day later to check on availability and the guy there said that they didn't have the $99 Keystation 49e, but that they did have a shipment of the M-Audio Radium49 in. I put a hold on one and picked it up the next day.

It costs more - $150. It has 49 keys and 16 MIDI presets that you can program. So it's a step up from the $99 version. And they had them in stock.

This is just expensive and unnecessary. The reason people buy All-in-One systems is because they're either portable or cheap. This is neither. I'll take a 12" Albook, M-audio Firewire 410 and Novation Remote 25 thanks.

. It's like somebody trying to buy a backhoe and you suggesting "Why not use a shovel? They're smaller." Because it doesn't do the same thing! If you want to record the exact soundwave produced by a singer on a high note, and play exactly that back into your ear, then lossless compression is your only choice.

No, using your analogy, it's like saying, "hey, I need to dig a hole in the garden to plant the seeds for my corn. I think that I'll use my backhoe." When the hole that you need to make could be just as easily made with a shovel, and in probably a much more effecient manner.

You have to use the right tool for the job. There is little need for playback of lossless audio if your sources aren't good enough to hear the difference. Particularly when they are grossly inadequate. "Hey, I'm listening to lossless audio while I jog." Whoopdido... who cares. Does losslessly encoded audio improve that experience? Probably not.

Now, lossless audio through a proper system (meaning a real sound card, none of this Creative resampling stuff). With a really good set of speakers and/or head phones. Now that can make a difference.

For really good sound cards, look at Lynx Studio, RME Audio, or M-Audio to name a few off the top of my head.

Pure digital is too big, Flac is 2 to 3 times smaller, and therefore this device fills an essential niche: it gets your Flac files to your receiver without requiring a compact disc

2 to 3 times smaller? Not really. 1.5-2 times smaller is more like it. Audio has too much information to compress more than that. You get about 55-65% compression. And most of that is due to the fact that left and right channels of audio tend to be relatively similar.

I'll give you that it would allow you to get your FLAC files to a receiver, just that you aren't really benefitting greatly from the files, as the devices analog output will not be as good as it needs to be.

M-audio released a new driver, version 1.2.7, yesterday that has support for the update if you installed it. It also adds 10.3 support along with 10.2.7 support for G5s according to the litle release note summary.

What I was wondering, is if anyone here had tried this update with the M-Audio Sonica USB device.

In addition to the overall functionality of this device, does anyone know if the Apple's DVD player in this OS version now supports 5.1 digital audio out? I've been lead to believe it does with PCI card Audio (such as the Revolution above), but it doesn't seem to for USB digital Audio out.

What I was wondering, is if anyone here had tried this update with the M-Audio Sonica USB device.

In addition to the overall functionality of this device, does anyone know if the Apple's DVD player in this OS version now supports 5.1 digital audio out? I've been lead to believe it does with PCI card Audio (such as the Revolution above), but it doesn't seem to for USB digital Audio out.

Yep, pure digital into a good system can be very good - it bypasses the cheap and nasty sounding analog bits that make the difference between good sound cards and average ones. My informal comparison was an analog setup plugged in the way I figure most non-audio-junkies would do it - eg just plug the powered speakers in and listen to it. I'm pretty keen to try out the flash external USB version of that M-Audio card - mmmm... 7.1 surround procesing, 24bit, 96kHz, 101 dB S/N, 0.00345% THD... But, yeh, my desk speakers won't do that kit justice, so it's going in my car instead :)

Unfortunately not only are they testing the audio chipsets, they're also testing the analog sections on the respective motherboards, which has the potential to screw up the sound much, much more than the sound chip ever dreamed.

I was shocked at the poor noise floor and stereo separation of the VIA Envy24PT chip - its older brother, the Envy24, has been used in pro and semipro audio I/O cards from the likes of M-Audio and Terratec. I believe the problem is due to the signal jungle that is a modern motherboard.

I'm a little dismayed at their lack of a recommendation for the Envy24PT - it performed very well in the audio tests and continually had the least CPU usage. Software bells and whistles are useless -- it's the sound that matters in the end. In any case, pardon the grumblings of an Envy24 fanboy.

If you're looking to get sound, then MB sound is just fine. I use it for filler/background noise all the time and love it.

If you're looking for music, they still have miles and miles to go before they will compete. Check out products by Lynx,M-Audio,,RME and Digital Audio Labs

Also check out this thread in a forum for a list of just some of the cards that are worth looking at.
HiFi Sound Cards

And don't be fooled by statistics and numbers, even the best DAC in the world can get messed up by some 2bit clown laying it down with the wrong analog circuitry to support it.

I'm not saying that the people who lay out all these cards are 2bit clowns, just that people look at the numbers and don't use their ears all too often.

The most important thing is do you like the sound that comes out of the system. If yes, then who cares what else is out there. Be happy with it.

Get an M-Audio Delta 410.

It has 4 inputs, and 10 outputs.

Do you have any exp using the m-audio audiophile usb or m-audio Sonica using the optial out with a dac such as Link DAC III 24/96

if you have i would like to know about the following:
-linux support
- can i control the volume though the spdif device - and then attach the DAC directly to a power amp
-best
-greg

Do you have any exp using the m-audio audiophile usb or m-audio Sonica using the optial out with a dac such as Link DAC III 24/96

if you have i would like to know about the following:
-linux support
- can i control the volume though the spdif device - and then attach the DAC directly to a power amp
-best
-greg

There's quite a few, actually. RME cards are what Paul Davis recommends; if you can do without quite as many channels, the M-Audio Delta series (especially the PCI-based options) work quite nicely as well.

I personally run MusE/Jack on an M-Audio Delta 1010LT (8 channels analog i/o + S/PDIF stereo i/o) at 24/96 and have yet to run into serious problems.

The Via C3 series is pretty anemic, especially in the FPU department. The Nehemiah series has a vastly improved FPU, but the current generation of Hush systems don't use them.

In any case, if MPEG2 is what you want, the Hauppage WinTV PVR-250 offers hardware MPEG2 compression. They just got basic support for it in MythTV in Linux, too. Linux support for the EPIA's onboard MPEG2 decoder is forthcoming as well (Alan Cox has one).

My only issue would be the AC97-based onboard sound. Hopefully VIA comes out with this board soon - it has the very high quality Envy24 24/96 sound chip on it. A lot of "semi-pro" recording cards like those from M-Audio use the Envy24 series. One good feature is lack of resampling on the SPDIF output.

Mackie, Alesis, M-audio, Roland, and MOTU (among others) also make professional audio interface equipment for recording and monitoring/listening.

There are a couple of Creative-licensed OEM products (Some of the Alesis stuff looks awfully familiar...) but most of these companies provide far better hardware and software for "real" sound applications. A nice audio interface w/ a pair of active studio monitors will sound worlds better than some cheap consumer surround sound system. The prices are pretty much comparable with Creative's "good" stuff.

Please, people, if you don't know what s/he's asking, keep your trap shut, m'kay? We're talking audio here, so signal-to-noise ratio counts, you see...

But, do you want to go the hardware or software recording route?

If you have a decent enough computer (G3 macs or PII upwards x86s will do the trick for about 16 tracks), you might consider getting a good soundcard.

I personally use a M-Audio Delta44, 4 inputs, 4 outputs, nothing more. Perfect for recording. They have nice break-out boxes, so you don't have to crouch behind your computer when plugging in your guitars, basses or mics, they work under Macs, PC's and have linux support via ALSA (yes, linux can do multitracking as well). When you need more tracks, you can just add more cards and get 8/8 or up to 16/16 in/out-system.

As for recording software, well... my delta came with a cut-down version of Logic Audio, which should be good enough for start. Most 'pro-sumer' soundcards come up with basic software, so you shouldn't need to cough up any more money for it in the beginning.

Other software: Cubase is nice, and there's nice 'lite'-versions for beginners (some soundcards come with this instead of logic). Cakewalk is quite popular as well.

If you just want audio recording (the aforementioned do MIDI as well), then there's Cool Edit Pro. For free, there's Audacity (audacity does Windows, Linux and Mac) which is proficient enough multitrack audio editor. SLab is a good linux multitrack recorder.

And mp3, well, you don't want to use mp3 for multitrack recording, but most modern software can import mp3-sounds, and output the result to mp3 (some of them [cool edit/audacity] can do ogg as well)

If you want a proper hardware recorder (which are nice, since you can take them to your rehersal space, summer cottage, ..., what have you), then there's plenty to choose from. Most of these are a couple of years old, so you can find them for reasonable prices used (or even new!)

Roland VS-8xx series, they're nice, compact, can do 4-track recording, and 8-track playback. Loads of features, and useful later on even if you grow out of this one. Earlier models had inbuilt harddrives, the later ones have ZIP-drives (if I remember correctly). If you can get one for cheap (and i think you should), then go for this one.

Korg D-8. A bit easier to operate, but quite useful nevertheless.

And i think Fostex had some as well, just keep your eyes open in the pawnshops.

Then get something like this or this.

Ben

Personally, I have an Omni Studio system and have been extremely pleased with it. The audio quality is excellent.

Notably, M-Audio has also been much more forthcoming with OS X drivers than any other company I've seen.

Personally, I have an Omni Studio system and have been extremely pleased with it. The audio quality is excellent.

Notably, M-Audio has also been much more forthcoming with OS X drivers than any other company I've seen.

USB does not have to be too slow for audio...

If you're using pro audio software, you're more than likely using ASIO drivers.

There are some USB devices out there that have a low latency, such as the Emagic 2|6, and (not quite as good) the M-Audio Quattro.

The problem seems to be that developing decent low latency drivers is a major part of the cost of these devices, so a lot of the low end ones just use the generic USB audio drivers provided with either Win or Mac. These drivers both suck.... lots...

For a decent roundup of effective latency on various cards, check out KVR's site.

My m-audio Audiophile 2496 card has an S/PDIF interface and records at 24bit/96KHz =) You can get one on eBay for around $150USD

I asked about pro soundcards once at linux.com and someone pointed me to http://www.m-audio.com - the 24-bit "audiophile" looks sweet to me.

Basically, the point I'm trying to get at there is there really is nothing they can do to stop the copying of music. So long as I can listen to it, I can find a way to copy it. Also, going to analogue just once does not have a significant detriment on sound quality. Yes, if you record something from your portible CD-player with your SoundBlaster Live it is going to sound like crap, what do you expect? You are dealing with cheap consumer electronics with cheap converters, lots of noise and jitter on both ends. However there are some of us that do own real professional gear (you don't need a liscence or anything) and will use it. And of course once we have translated it and released, everyone can have it and believe me, we will.

Posting AC for reasons that shoudl be apparant.

I've been waiting years for linux to be my music platform. It's very embarrasing to inform a client that the excellent performance they just did got toasted by the BSOD. Been there too many times.

A slight bit off topic: this morning I was checking out the New Products Preview section in the latest Mix Magazine (Aug 2000). The first item is an ADAT interface, and listed in the supported platforms: Linux. Wow! I wonder if they make something for my DA-88 based setup? If so, I'll write the check right now! (For those interested, it's the Delta 1010-AI from M Audio.)

Are you listening Opcode, Cakewalk, Sek'd, Digidesign, and all the rest? If you make it for Linux, and I need what it does, you'll have my money. Clear enough?