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(Marcos Marrero) wrote in message . com...
OK, please don't flame me but I have to ask this question. I'm looking
into the purchasing a sound card for recording music. The soundblaster
Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro looks like a good choice, but I've heard about
the Edirol and M-Audio "Professional" sound cards. What is yours guys
opinion? Which one should I go with. I've compared the soundblaster to
the other cards (Edirol, M-audio) and don't see much of a difference
at all. Help please!!!!

I've been fooling around with SB cards a bit. You didn't mention MIDI
but I can tell you that especially with an Audigy, you get amazing
Midi capability for the price. They utilize system memory not an
onboard chip as with other cards, so, if you have 2 gigs of memory,
you can use whatever the computer doesn't need for midi patches. The
Live card works similarly but is restricted to 32 megs of ram for
midi, which is still healthy. The other neat thing is that you can
create your own midi patches with their Soundfont protocol.

As far as recording, you didn't indicate what you're recording. You're
going to be limited to 2 tracks and I'm told that their d/a converters
aren't as good as some dedicated pro cards, though they're not bad. If
you're just making demos for yourself, you'll probably find the card
more than good enough and represents a lot of capability for the
price. However, if you're looking to do many tracks at once, you'd
have to look elsewhere.

Be advised, there can be issues with installation and getting them to
run correctly, though supposedly they've ironed out many of the bugs
in the latest versions, and some of the bugs aren't the card's fault,
they're due to flaws the card exposes in certain mobo chipsets, at
least that's my understanding.

The other thing about Creative/Soundblaster is that their live
customer support is legendary for being terrible. Calling tech support
is at best a crap shoot. However, they do have an extensive knowledge
base which I've found far more useful, and there are Soundblaster
usenet groups. If you get the thing working, the Audigy can do great
things.