SOUNDCARDS FOR RECORDING AUDIO ONTO PC OR LAP TOP

A sound card is a piece of hardware that fits internally (PCI) or externally (FireWire and USB) to your computer and will have at least one input for recording audio such as a mic and at least one output for monitors or headphones. It may also have MIDI. Some sound cards such as the Delta 1010 by M-Audio can record up to 8 tracks at once using analogue inputs. The inputs and outputs on the Delta 1010 are phono sockets so I use phono to jack leads to connect the soundcard to my analogue mixer which I use to plug instruments in. The Delta 1010 also has 2 mic preamps which use a basic XLR mic lead to connect the mics to.

There are many different types of soundcard to choose from including PCI, FireWire and USB. I want a soundcard that will enable me to multi-track 8 tracks of real audio onto my PC at 24bit. I also want at least 4 outputs and to use MIDI. I want all this with extremely low latency (latency is the time it takes your computer to transfer analogue audio to digital audio back to analogue audio again for output to speakers and played back and is normally measured in milliseconds)

The Fire Wire soundcards (such as the Project Mix by M-Audio) operate externally from your PC or Lap-Top by providing an audio interface that has inputs and outputs and connects to your computer using FireWire. FireWire is supposed to be better than USB in that the data is streamed at a more constant rate. My experience of using Firewire is that it does come with its own set of problems including clicking sounds that can feature on the recordings and apparent sensitivety to static from Lap Top screens.

FireWire 400 allows a data transfer speed of 400Mbps and FireWire 800 is 800Mbps. Although a bonus to FireWire is you can hook it up to laptops the static from lap top screens can interfere with recordings by leaving clicking sounds on the recordings. The two FireWire soundcards I had problems with this were the Alesis Multimix 16 Firewire and the M-Audio Project Mix by M-Audio. The clicking sounds the Alesis produced were so bad I had to exchange it for somehting different. I ended up using the Projectmix with the Desktop PC anyway even though I had bought it to use with the lap-top in mind as the Projectmix also had problems recording with the lap-top. After only 18 months the Projectmix broke down and was out of warranty so I went back to the Delta 1010 which is working great. The Delta 1010 is a PCI sound card.

PCI soundcards go inside the PC in a spare PCI slot on the motherboard. Although they won't work on laptops they are very stable when fitted and can transfer data much faster than FireWire and USB soundcards. M-Audio PCI soundcards seem to be some of the best on the market. I use a Delta 1010 and it has 8 analogue inputs/outputs, 2 mic pre-amps, 24 bit/96 kHz and MIDI. There is very low latency and I've used it to record up to 8 tracks at once and running MIDI and it does it all great. I believe the smaller models including the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 which you can buy for about £50 are also very stable.

Once you've installed your PCI soundcard into your computer you will then need to install the drivers (A driver is a programme which allows computer programmes to interact with a device such as a sound card) You can download drivers for free from the internet if you don't have the driver disk :-) M-Audio's website has free driver downloads for all of their soundcards. Once the Drivers are installed and the PCI sound card is fitted then you should be ready to rock and roll with whatever software you are using.

USB sound cards come as either USB 1.1 (can reach speeds of up to 12Mbps) or USB 2.0 (You will need a USB 2.0 port on your computer) where transfer speeds are up to 480Mbps. I'm currently researching about people's experiences with USB sound cards to record real audio as I've never used one to record real audio.

Conclusion

When choosing a sound card it's good to take into consideration how many tracks you want to record at once and whether it's being used with a lap-top or desk top. My advice is stick with PCI for quality and stability, I can't comment on the USB but FireWire was not a good experience for me with the lap tops. I'll be updating this article as I find more stuff out, peace Clare :-)