Max Holubitsky wrote in message ...
Hopefully this isn't as controversial as my turntable question.. but
what are you all using as a sound card?

I use a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz - which is great (does 4-track
recording too!). But if I was buying today I would get M-audio
Revolution or for a bit more M-audio Audiophile 2496.

I have been using the one that's
built into my motherboard, but it just doesn't cut it when hooked up to
quality headphones. (or, I expect, to my stereo, which I intend to hook
it up to).

will you be using the stereo's DAC or the DAC in your sound card?


I am looking for a 2 channel PCI sound card, with no special features,
other than a good S/N ratio, and low distortion. Price should be
reasonable too, as I am just experimenting with this whole computer
audio thing.

Also.. for compressing music.. mp3 or wma? I have created a whole bunch
of 192 bps wma files, and they sound all right, but with some background
noise in my sennheiser headphones. I am not impressed with the level of
background noise, it sounds like a tape recording made without dolby on
normal bias tape. I am not sure if it's the wma compression scheme, or
the sound card at fault.

As a matter of principle I will not use WMA with its builtin DRM and
lack of (easy) convertibility to WAV.

I rip CDs with Exact Audio Copy (EAC).
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
For lossy compression I use MP3 - LAME encoder (with the RazorLAME
GUI) with these options "-b 256 -m j -h -V 4 -B 320"
http://lame.sourceforge.net/
http://www.dors.de/razorlame/index.php


For lossless compression (my preference) I use Monkey's Audio at the
"normal" compression level.
http://www.monkeysaudio.com/

If recording from analogue (I use RipVinyl for recording WAVs;
CoolEdit for editing; then compress afterwards) make sure to watch
levels to avoid clipping.

Sathyan