Serious Sound Card

[BrandonS]

Hi. I use an Alesis io|26 firewire interface and the recordings are perfect, and awesome. The problem I have is with the soundcard I suppose, it is not able to process very much. This is why a lot of my current songs have less than 10 tracks in them. Open up a couple VSTs, try to use an amp sim, and BOOM -- you're in drop-out city. It goes as far as to be completely silent if you use too much. It's really annoying.

So I'm here asking if anyone has recommendations for a powerful sound card that won't break my bank. The kind of sound card that could easily run a few instances of Guitar Rig, a lot of VSTs, etc... I know the current world is making all kind of high-tech and layered electronica and stuff, I can barely make a song with programmed drums, 2 rhythm tracks, bass, and a solo.

Thanks for the help. :z

 

[Line666]

The fairly obvious question that needs to be ask if you can't run more than that amount of tracks is:

What are your pc specs?

 

[BrandonS]

The fairly obvious question that needs to be ask if you can't run more than that amount of tracks is:

What are your pc specs?

Well, It's quite an old PC. But it was pretty high end for its time and has had some RAM augmentations.

Pentium 4 2.80GHz / 2.79GHz
2.75GB Ram
SB Live! 24-bit
Radeon X300 series video card

I use Firewire for the recording interface.

The processor is actually better than the one in the refurbs I've been looking at so I don't know, it might be better to just try to upgrade this system... but the case is broken, the RAM is old (except for the new pieces), pretty much everything is very old in this. And the hard drive is full.

 

[muckypup1]

Well, It's quite an old PC. But it was pretty high end for its time and has had some RAM augmentations.

Pentium 4 2.80GHz / 2.79GHz
2.75GB Ram
SB Live! 24-bit
Radeon X300 series video card

I use Firewire for the recording interface.

The processor is actually better than the one in the refurbs I've been looking at so I don't know, it might be better to just try to upgrade this system... but the case is broken, the RAM is old (except for the new pieces), pretty much everything is very old in this. And the hard drive is full.

Its almost the same as my computer Mine is an old Dell with the same Pentium 2.80GHz but with a lot less Ram and a tiny hard-drive, only 40 GB

 

[BrandonS]

Mine too, is a Dell, and the hard drive was 160gb split into four 40gb partitions!

I'm running Cubase 5... but if Wintersun had this PC, Time would be delayed until 2024 A.D.

'cause i can't run my vsts

I made this yesterday, http://compo.thasauce.net/files/BrandonS_-_Abortion(OHC077).mp3 and after I put in the Guitar Rig for the rhythms, and one for the solo, the session literally went silent because there wasn't enough power to play it back. Also had AddictiveDrums for programmed drums and a simple compressor on the bass. -_-

Makes it impossible to mix or master anything when you can't hear it

 

[JeffTD]

Your audio interface (aside from buffer settings) has absolutely nothing to do with the processing power of your computer and how many plugins/VSTi's you can run.

 

[TheDriller]

Mine too, is a Dell, and the hard drive was 160gb split into four 40gb partitions!

I'm running Cubase 5... but if Wintersun had this PC, Time would be delayed until 2024 A.D.

'cause i can't run my vsts

I made this yesterday, http://compo.thasauce.net/files/BrandonS_-_Abortion(OHC077).mp3 and after I put in the Guitar Rig for the rhythms, and one for the solo, the session literally went silent because there wasn't enough power to play it back. Also had AddictiveDrums for programmed drums and a simple compressor on the bass. -_-

Makes it impossible to mix or master anything when you can't hear it

Not meaning to be an Ass or anything, but if like you said in another thread, $500 is "spending money" for you,
why not just get a decent computer?

heck, i've been on minimum wage my whole life and can still afford a nice computer.

 

[BrandonS]

Not meaning to be an Ass or anything, but if like you said in another thread, $500 is "spending money" for you,
why not just get a decent computer?

heck, i've been on minimum wage my whole life and can still afford a nice computer.

I just said that to shut the guy up. I did have some money but recent problems have borked everything. EVERYTHING.

Using a 512 buffer with the ASIO Alesis Firewire gives like 12ms latency... Now running Cubase with BFD2 and trying to record causes my recordings to go out of sync and have silent spots in the recording... I wanted to turn the buffer down to 256 but I doubt I'd be able to do that if it can't even handle 512... I don't know what to do. *cry*

 

[guitarguru777]

Your PC is definitely the issue. Its not your sound card.

The issue is you are running out of RAM so the system is trying to process everything using Virtual Ram (your Hard Drive). This slows down systems to almost a stand still.

If I may post a suggestion:
This is what I currently use with the addition of a FireWire card for my I/O and an upgraded video card:
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=dddoba6&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19

Minimum specs I recommend to get a minimum of 32 tracks going with various VST's and processing

Dual Core 2.7
64 Bit
4 Gigs Of Ram
Main Hard Drive 250 - 500GB SATA 7200 rpm - 10k rpm if you can afford it
Secondary Hard Drive - 500gb to 1TB SATA Hard Drive 7200 RPM or more
Decent video card Nvidia 8000 or higher

A system like the one above with an additional hard disk and video card shouldn't run you more then $400 to $500 tops.

One other thing I used to do to save on CPU usage when I had a shitty PC, was after I got the drums completed I bounced them all to Wave files and re-imported them into the project. This allowed me to get rid of the Drum VST and Samples thus freeing up a ton of RAM as the samples from your drum VST aren't eating up memory. Dont do them as a stereo file! Export each drum as a mono wave then re-import them. Then you still have full control over the overall mix of the drums.

 

[John_C]

Jeff got it right. All FX (with exception of ones with special hardware: UAD etc..) run off the CPU. A soundcard is something you take out and stomp on with glee whilst holding your shiny proper interface