Hey what do you think the best sound card is for mp3/cd's . I am going to build a comp strictly for Music recording, and stuff, also for storing music.. What would be the best PCI sound card, because i beilve PCI is the only slot sound cards use,, unless there is a better one,,, any help will be greatly apperctiated, thank you..
I guess it really depends on what you want to use it for. If you want to get into professional audio recording using programs like Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic, or Reason, than a consumer PCI soundcard won't provide you with the best quality possible. Go with an MBOX, a M-Audio interface, or Mackie makes a nice audio box as well. As far as PCI soundcards do Soundblaster makes pretty decent ones. I'm not sure if there are any available yet that do 7.1 though. I have a SB Audigy and it works decent for playing mp3s and watching DVDs. The SB Audigy 2 has even more features as well. Another very well made card is the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. Unfortunately its not manufactured anymore, so you'll have to try somewhere like ebay.
yeah M-Audio makes, or I should say MADE good products. I forgot to mention that a few months ago M-Audio was bought by digidesign, the company that makes the industry standard audio recording system Pro Tools. Just an FYI if you buy an M-Audio, cause you may not have support for it for much longer
lol sorry. the good news is that digidesign will continue to offer support for it. in fact, they are releasing special versions of pro tools that will work with the m-audio hardware. so it sucks that m-audio was bought out, but at least it was bought out by the best company in the business. btw, this new preview window is pretty cool!
i love my sound blaster live it may not be the best or highest priced but for what i use it for (watching downloaded tv shows) it more than does the job
yeah the SB live card definately gets the job done decently. Back when I DJ'd I had a SB live card and a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card, and then ran dual winamps and crossfaded via an external mixer. Even pumping out music at 1200 watts they still sounded, well, acceptable for live I guess. It didn't help that I was using low bitrate mp3s at the time also. I shudder thinking about the days before EAC/LAME/VBR....
Yeah I had a pretty sweet setup. I had a standard 4' tall carpeted DJ booth on casters, a 4U rackmount computer (just a 800mhz AMD is plenty to play mp3s), an EV 300 X 2 watt amp for the dual 15" tower speakers, a SAE 100 X 2 watt amp for the smaller speakers, and a 600 X 1 amp (can't remember brand right now...) for the 18" sub. I also had a numark dual CD player for backup, and a 15 X 2 band equalizer, and a numark mixer on top. Coolest part was I had a 15" LCD that slid out from the top, and a trackball mouse so I could control everything from the DJ booth. It was a pretty sweet setup, worked great. I put well over $5000 into it, but sadly I sold it all a year or two ago when I needed money to buy a car, and then got into teaching so I haven't been into DJing for a few years though. Fun hobby though, if you don't mind giving up your Friday and Saturday nights.
I pretty much mainly did weddings. A few high school parties here and there. Best thing about weddings is that its usually the same music, very easy to DJ, every ones always in a good mood (which also means it pays better than average) and best of all...open bar!
