New Souncard

[Dan Island]

I am going to get back into making some music again, are Sound Blasters still the best souncard around?

[roman.i]

I am going to get back into making some music again, are Sound Blasters still the best souncard around?

Not anymore for like 20 years.

[Dan Island]

Sheesh, things change so quickly these days!!

[BertKoor]

Back then it was the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 that shook up the world. Believe it or not, M-Audio got bought up by Avid, owners of ProTools.

I had two soundblasters installed to do 4-track recording. It worked fine (after solving some IRQ & DMA conflicts)

Onboard sound these days is nearly as good as that, except that you'd be lucky if it has a stereo line input.

Anyway, to get an answer to your question, answer this first:
What are your requirements regarding inputs & outputs? What's the budget?

[Dan Island]

Thanks mate, it was a kinda joke post, being a wee bit ironic, just ordered a Scarlett 4i4 (gen3) to replace my 9 year old under utilised Akai EIE Pro. \i think I had the 2496 too back in the day, after my soundblaster. Wasted a lot of money on gear to produce nothing lol.

I hope I am more productive with the new one.

[BertKoor]

3rd gen 4i4 (B-stock even) is exactly what's on my desk since some weeks. I had been without a proper interface for some years. With no hope that desktop XP machine with PCI card (ESI/Audiotrak Maya1010) is going to boot up any more, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

Are you on windows? I'm using a MacBook. Let us know what you think about the 4i4...

[Dan Island]

I had to turn the gain way up when I tried singing with the Akai so I bought a new mic..Rode NT1A, and still was the same, watching YT vids about the Rode indicated I should not need my gain almost full so I got a new interface....lets see how that goes.