What sound card to use for recording?
OK guyz...against all logical sense, I've been using the on-board soundcard in my puter, which may or not be contributing to my recording problems. I actually thought that the GNX behaved as the sound card when recording in PTP or whatever, but I may be wrong. Can any of you guyz comment on this, and/or give info on what soundcard you use with what software (and with what degree of success??). Thanks in advance. 8)
Comments
But, I figure if I ever wanna sound as good as youse guyz, I better get a handle on it.
You don't ever want to be using the on-board sound card for anything. The GNX4 makes a great audio interface for recording. Mine coexists quite happily with my other interfaces (EMU1820M, Rig Kontrol-2, M-Audio USB).
I had a PC built for me as a dedicated DAW and I NEVER have the slightest glitch. It boots and shuts down almost instantly. It's loaded with:
SONAR PE 6
Reaper
Guitar Rig 2 and 3
Reaktor 5
Amplitube LE
XEdit
All the Synths and sampler stuff that came with the 1820M
Tons of Plug-ins
Lots of soft-synths
inTone Matrix (check out www.audiffex.com)
And that's it apart from the stuff that comes with XP.
The PC was built by www.liquidDAW.com
Cheers!
Mickster
Presonus interfaces, Focusrite, or any firewire rig if external.
I have the Saffire and it works great for home stuff.
EMU 0404 is less than $100 for an internal card and your overall PC sound wil be much happier with it. Integrated audio can work, but not anywhere near as good.
External devices are the way to go when you don't want to be tied to one computer. Firewire is preferred over USB because it's less processor intensive.
Cheers!
Mickster
Basically, stick with PCI because USB devices can do funny things.... well, they have in my experience.
Also, some onboard sound cards work quite ok. Not in my experience though....
Yup even the Windows alert sounds come out of it, occasionally resulting in needing an underwear change but I think that they can be switched off.
Mickster.
Yah...so I think that having an onboard soundcard probably wouldn't have anything to do with getting recording s/ware to work. PTP never worked for me no matter how much I tweaked the s/ware or optimized my system, but apparently it's not the soundcard...
Hmmm, I've been doing the DAW thing for about 10 years now but have never known of anyone successfully using the on-board sound card for DAW work...you need something purpose-built with great drivers. Even the Sound-blaster, with it's impressive specification is not well suited to DAW stuff. Just try the GNX, it works great and you have the ability to re-amp, using the GNX FX as an alternative to plug-ins.
Cheers!
Mickster
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/MAudio-Delta-1010-LT-PCI-Digital-Audio-System?sku=701376
They work great. In fact I have 2 extras if anybody is interested. $125 each. I have four of these but my new computer only has 2 PCI slots instead of 4, so i'm getting rid of two.
What sort of problems do you experience when trying to record, btw?
I never used PTP because I already had SONAR.
Mickster
I didn't even bother disabling the onboard s/card in BIOS, 'cuz my recording s/ware already had the GNX selected as it's sound card.
The problem I've had, and am having, is that I can't record! Even if I enable just one track, it records with static, stuttering, or some combination of inaccurate reproduction. Using more than one track at a time is impossible.
Also, my \"audio engine\" continuously craps out (\"audio engine stopped\"), so you have to either restart it, or restart the whole program.
That, and the usual latency problems.
Now, I ran several threads griping about this a while back, and got lots of advice from others about settings, tweaking, optimizing one's PC for audio use. Did TONS of research and spent hours diddling the puter and settings, with no noticeable improvement in quality or capability.
So after months of that I decided computer recording sux and I now record on a h/ware digital recorder.
I'm having some better s/ware donated to me, so once I bring my PC back from the dead :roll: I might give it another try, before I start using my PC to hold up the corner of my desk. :?
No. You can use multiple sound cards at once - one for outputting one for inputting etc. It is one of the reasons why i use Adobe Audition. It lets you use any or all of the sound cards in your system at once. So you can have 2 less expensive 4 tracks and with audition you can get 8 tracks. You can also ouput different tracks on different sound cards all at once.
identify as gnx4 or digitech just as speaker (3 of them in all) USB.
When I have my m-audio ozonic on it shows up as m-audio ozonic i/o.
My OS is vista home premium and I just moved to sonar home studio 6 xl.
It was well worth it,too many issues with ptp.
Any ideas about why gnx4 or digitech does not identify in hardware-sound
or device manager by their product names?
Does the gnx4 actually have a soundcard or just acts as a soundcard?
I can give more specific if need be.
Thanks,
dthgtr
or increase the buffer size. It's been so long since I used PTP I don't
recall. But in Sonar you can increase those and I would think you could also in PTP. My queue in sonar is set at 12 and the buffer size is set at 20.msec. Also make sure your sampling rate is set for 44.1 and I would set the Audio driver bit depth at 16 to start. Just try increasing the buffer size a little at a time and see if it starts improving. If your getting noise and show a wave form, durring playback then you have likely recorded something. You just need to get to playback right. What your doing is increasing how much the buffer preloads. If it's not enough then it will playback faster than it can load and then you get the stuttering and the drop outs. It might take 2 or 3 times and then all of a sudden it's like magic. And it plays. If PTP has a wave profiler you may need to run it. I don't recall.
limitations became pretty apparent real quick. That's one of the problems with bundled software, It's always a cut down version and usually buggy.
You really shouldn't be having so much trouble being that you aren't using
an additional sound card. Of course there is always the remote possibility
that It's not your computer and It's your GNX. But doesn't sound like it from the way you describe the problem. If I try to playback through my 3k, I don't get any sound unless I physically press the USB mix button on the 3k it's self. Anyway hope you figure it out.
DAW's are resource eating programs. very demanding of the PC or MAC and like many other devices require certain tweaks for stability. I know many users that have struggled up and down with DAW's. When I finally did a remote access ( in which they allowed) I found so much garbage backrunning and registry related it wasn't funny. In some cases, I told them just back up their photos, audio, video, and format that hdd. Especially after defrag of the system still could not allocate space and re-organize the hdd.
Others had 80gb Hdd, with enough program space to add Sonar etc, but nothing left to store. Loaded with non essential programs, bundles, 2-3 antiviral programs ( free net services) and typical junk.
Drivers?? I can't tell you how many had several instances of installs, multiples on single ports, audio hardware mis-configurations, etc.
Pro Tracks is an old version of Sonar 2.0. Similar in feature but not as nearly compared to Sonar Studio or newer programs. But even the newer programs are very system specific just like PTP.
Pro Tracks, Cubase LE, Abelton Lite, do not get much in terms of support since they are basically free get ya going type utilities and teasers for you to eventually buy the better versions. IOW, they don;t spend the money on web and tutorial support on sample services. Now if you purchased Sonar Producer, or even Sonar Studio, there are dedicated areas for training etc.
Want to learn SONAR, and other programs like a PRO??? Go to VTC.com or Lynda.com you can sign up for a month and get unlimited access to hours of long winded step by step tutorials you can view at home. Everything from Sonar, Cubase, Logic, FL Studio, Adobe Audition, etc etc etc. Sonar Producer 6.0 alone is over 9 hrs of step by step walk throughs from beginning setups, to advanced automation, multitracking, undertstanding plugin's etc.
Digitalmusicdoctor.com also have services you can sign up for educational reference.
If you really really want to learn DAW's amd time is a value, STOP scrolling through google searches and just look at the tutorials available through these services. They are outstanding! Some people spend countless days researching how to's and these services from VTC etc are well defined, well put together and the most instructional you will ever find. If you hate the Sonar or Cubase phonebooks, I strongly suggest these service oriented websites.
Most in depth imo are the VTC.com tutorials. Others are very good and 50 x better than lurking forums for days for answers, instruction.
Does the gnx4 work as a USB sound card? If it does, then I would try to ignore the fact that it doesn't appear in device manager as a \"Digitech USB\" or something.