Audio Q & A

How Fast?

Q: My question relates to using a PC for MIDI applications.  Some time ago I looked into a decent soundcard, with the idea of using some appropriate sequencing software. Computer stores all seemed to sell SoundBlaster, so I went to several music stores. The card that impressed me the most in listening comparisons was a model which uses Ensoniq samples. Ensoniq, as I understand it, is a well-known synthesizer manufacturer.

I will soon be moving the company Pentium from my home to the office and have access to a 386 running Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. One of my employees does freelance graphics on a Mac and uses a 386 for MIDI. He claims that it's really like the roll on a player piano, and that you don't need any more power than a 386. He's talking about using Cubasis software. Is this a reasonable and effective approach? Could I start out with this Ensoniq card and Cubasis on a Windows 3.11-based 386? Any other suggestions or recommendations?

A: Sorry, but (according to my tests) he is giving you poor advice. Cubase has serious timing problems on slower machines, especially when working with audio. (See our features on Cubase and Cubasis elsewhere in this section for details, or do a search on the Net ). At a minimum, a P180 or better is recommended (generally, any new Intel-based computer you can buy today will be fast enough). If you are using a MIDI interface with an onboard, dedicated CPU, and you are never using audio, then a low-end computer is okay. But the trend these days is to integrate audio (e.g., Cubasis Audio) and signal-processing effects -- both very CPU intensive. Audio demands a fast hard disk, too. Go for a fast 7200 RPM IDE drive, a RAID array or a dedicated SCSI drive.

As far as sound cards go.... "funny you should ask." The good news is, I use a PC to record MIDI and audio with excellent results. The bad news is that sound cards like the Mediatrix AudioTrix XG, Terratec EWS64XL and Hanmesoft SoundTrack Ruby 128 -- all "good" sound cards -- are sitting in their packages, while I use a professionally frowned-upon but completely reliable SoundBlaster  Live card instead. High end PC sound cards can be a huge hassle and, in general, don't work well for "general purpose" audio output from games or multimedia applications. In other words, professional-level sound cards tend to work very well in music programs, and not much else. If I were building a dedicated music machine, though, I'd probably go for one of the low-latency cards listed at kvr-vst.com, in the ASIO section.

For all-around good results, the SB Live does a decent job.  It works like a charm in virtually every application, while my Terratec, a $1200 sound card, was such a problem it now sits in a box. That's sad. The company that makes the Live! now makes a Mac version, too, by the way. It also owns owns  Ensoniq, the renowned synthesizer maker, and now manufacturers high-end cards under the Ensoniq brand name, too. The SB Live Value Edition card is a decent low-end (about $75 CDN) card. It requires a PCI slot. Its full-blown sibling, the $250 SB Live Platinum, is a good choice for gaming, MIDI and digital audio enthusiasts. It's most notable limitation is the fact that it always uses a 48KHz sample rate. While this is not bad (it's higher than some "Pro" cards on the market at higher prices), its inflexibility makes it unsuitable for some tasks, especially where bit-identical transfers of 44.1 KHz original recordings are required. Its lack of ASIO drivers may also a problem when using versions of Cubase older than 5.0. (Version 5.0 supports a "full duplex DirectX" mode driver that works well on this card.)

One of the best-supported "high-end" sound cards available is the Yamaha DSP Factory (PCI!), which is garnering good (but not great) support from high-end sequencers from Steinberg, emagic and others. The Echo Gina, Darla and Layla (PCI again) series of cards are fairly trouble-free, too. Although "Latency" was a problem with early driver revisions, the latest revisions support latency values as low as 4ms with these cards, thanks to their specialized ASIO drivers. Other brands of cards have even lower latency values for even better audio playback-while-recording performance. See our audio hardware report in the hardware section for more details.

If you really want to "have it all," get a  SB Live AND a high-fidelity audio-only card with high-performance ASIO drivers for Cubase. Or get a G3 or G4 Mac. (Note, however, that there isn't a single Mac card listed in the top 13 cards, in terms of latency performance in Cubase.) Or get a hardware (non-computer) recorder, as I am sometimes sorely tempted to do.

Q: There is this YAMAHA card I'm considering: 192 XG - 676 Instruments - 21 drum kits, etc.  I am trying to compare it to Sound Blaster cards 64, 128 Live (and Value). The main initial question is that all the music programs for piano, speech recognition etc., as well as voice training ask for Sound Blaster compatibility. What exactly is Sound Blaster compatibility?

A: There are several types of "Sound Blaster" cards and thus, several issues related to compatibility.

Generally, few third-party chips successfully emulate even the low-end SB16; they usually tout "Sound Blaster Pro" compatibility instead. This is an obsolete standard as, indeed, SB16 now is, too.

The Sound Blaster Live, Sound Blaster AWE64, Monster Sound MX300 and several other sound cards are reviewed elsewhere on this site. Please start with the Sound Blaster reviews and see if they answer your questions.

In brief, I'd say the Aureal A3D 2.0 spec is the best "3D audio" spec available today, followed closely by Creative Labs' EAX. Sadly, Aureal went out of business, and the patents were bought up by Creative Labs, which hasn't done much with them. One of the leading supporters of the Aureal spec, Diamond Multimedia, pulled out of the sound card (and graphics card) business shortly thereafter. Thus, the Diamond Monster Sound MX300, once a recommended card here at Audio Buyer's Guide, is no longer on our list of favorites. This leaves the Sound Blaster Live family (my favorite of the two, anyway) as my recommended "consumer" sound cards. Many users also report good results from inexpensive Yamaha XG-compatible cards, but you may have compatibility problems with newer or less popular operating systems such as Windows XP or Linux, etc..

I'd rate the SB Live as considerably better at MIDI, and the ("Sound Blaster Pro compatible!") MX300 as slightly better at games. I use one of each, in machines optimized for those two purposes. My only major complaint about the SB Live is its lack of official support for the ASIO driver standard used by Cubase VST, a popular music app.

In summary, for maximum "Sound Blaster" compatibility, get a real Sound Blaster.

Q: Can digital systems record an unlimited number of tracks? Or are there tracks at all?

A: (Thanks to ManicJanik): We should clarify some terminology when discussing sound cards. For instance, when one mentions the Digidesign Audiomedia III card, one might say it had 8 tracks, as it can only play 8 sounds simultaneously. However, this is technically incorrect. All sound cards have three basic attributes, VOICEs INPUTs and OUTPUTs, TRACKs is a "virtual" term. How many tracks you have depends on your software. How many of those tracks can be heard at any one time, however, is dependant upon how many VOICES your card supports. e.g. Using the Audiomedia III card w/ Protools, You could have recorded your band, two tracks at a time (the AM III has 2 INPUTs), building up tracks by overdubbing until you had all the instruments recorded. The problem though, while Protools may allow some 40 odd TRACKS in a given Session, You can only hear 8 of them using the AM III card, since it only has 8 VOICEs. And It only has 2 OUTPUTs, so if you wanted to dump your tracks to an ADAT, for instance, you'd have to do it 2 tracks at a time.

TRACKs VOICEs INPUTs & OUTPUTs are all important when making a decision to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a system. As we've said before, users should know what their requirements are FIRST, then make a decision about which hardware/software combination to buy.