Hello!

I am just about to buy myself a new PC. This time I won´t use it for
anything else than recording.

While reading your posts here about soundcards i tend to get very
confused. Seems like every card on the market gets both loved and
hated by this board. I was recomended the MOTU 828mkII by a friend of
mine, but after reading your comments I´m not so sure anymore. Im
leaning towards the EMU 1820M now.

I will only be recording myself, and theres no need for firewire since
im planning to stay at home. What would you recommend?

Q2:

For my new machine ill put in 2 SATA discs of 200 gig each. im
planning to use one as a sample libary and the other one for system
and recordings. Do you agree that this is the most efficiant way?

all the best,

/David

"Dave" wrote in message
om


I am just about to buy myself a new PC. This time I won´t use it for
anything else than recording.

Good idea.

While reading your posts here about soundcards i tend to get very
confused. Seems like every card on the market gets both loved and
hated by this board.

Nahh, every sound card has strong points and weak points. We just know
something about both their strong and weak points.

I was recomended the MOTU 828mkII by a friend of
mine, but after reading your comments I´m not so sure anymore. Im
leaning towards the EMU 1820M now.

I'm sure either one would be a giant improvement over what you have now. Of
course that may or may not the best choice for you.

I will only be recording myself, and theres no need for firewire since
im planning to stay at home. What would you recommend?

Do you seriouisly think that only these criteria should be used to chose
sound cards from all those that are available?

Q2:

For my new machine ill put in 2 SATA discs of 200 gig each. im
planning to use one as a sample libary and the other one for system
and recordings. Do you agree that this is the most efficiant way?

It's a really good idea to have more than one hard drive on a PC that is
pretending it is a DAW. It's good to know more details, like which software
you intend to use, before commenting further. That would have helped in Q1,
BTW. Note that you asked us which sound card to choose, without explicitly
telling us that you intended to do a lot of sampling or how. That wasn't
nice, was it?

hi David,

i just posed a 'similar' question - some of which might prove useful to
you...

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...229528e24be3a1

im not sure if thats how u post a link to a posting!
haha...

cheers

Luke

In article writes:

While reading your posts here about soundcards i tend to get very
confused. Seems like every card on the market gets both loved and
hated by this board.

Same with just about every piece of audio gear, with very few
exceptions (on either side of the fence).

I was recomended the MOTU 828mkII by a friend of
mine, but after reading your comments I´m not so sure anymore. Im
leaning towards the EMU 1820M now.

These are rather different. You should be looking at the features
first, deciding what you need, what you like, what's really cool that
you never thought of and will probably use, and what it does that
you never think you'll need. Look closely at metering, monitoring
facilities, input and output connectors, operating levels - stuff like
that. These days, at any ballpark price point, there isn't going to be
such a big difference in sound so that you will feel compelled to
reject something that you really like otherwise.

I will only be recording myself, and theres no need for firewire since
im planning to stay at home. What would you recommend?

Unless one of the things you'll be doing is recording a full drum kit
with eight mics, I'd look at a good two-channel card like the Lynx L22
rather than an 8-channel one. But if you anticipate the needs for
eight channels of I/O you need to look at the sort of thing you're
looking at.

For my new machine ill put in 2 SATA discs of 200 gig each. im
planning to use one as a sample libary and the other one for system
and recordings. Do you agree that this is the most efficiant way?

What a luxury! That's a load of disk space, and the temptation when
you have that much space, is to never back things up but just let them
remain on the disk until it gets more than half full (which is still a
heap of stuff). You might find it more sensible to use one disk for
the operating system and virtual memory (it doesn't need to be 200 GB)
and partition the other one into a sample library volume and a
recording volume. Since samples are rarely longer than about 30-second
recordings, that volume will grow a lot slower than your recording
volume, so you might arrange it for something like 80 GB of samples
and 120 GB of audio. At 400 MB/minute for 24 tracks at 24/96, that's 5
hours of solid recording. That should be enough to keep a couple of
projects active at a time, and fill up fast enough to encourage you to
make backups regularly.

Have you thought about a backup medium?



--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Dave wrote:

I will only be recording myself, and theres no need for firewire since
im planning to stay at home. What would you recommend?

How many channels do you need and what are your demands for quality?
What kind of inputs and outputs do you need?

I just bought Tascam US-122 today, I'll just go home to give it a try


For my new machine ill put in 2 SATA discs of 200 gig each. im
planning to use one as a sample libary and the other one for system
and recordings. Do you agree that this is the most efficiant way?

No. Don't put system and recordings on one disc. It's not crucial, but
if you have a choice, you better don't do it. I'd recommend to buy 3
disks by your case.
1) one 40 gig hdd for system. create 3 partitions on it:
- 1st for swap file. It should be approx. 2 times your memory size plus
several gigs for temporary files
- 2nd for system. let's say 20-25 gigs
- 3rd for just software, documents and stuff

2) one 200 gig (or whatever large hdd) for recordings. you can partition
it to retain better overview of projects etc.
3) one 200 gig hdd for samples

SATA is very much OK.

regards,
Sven

"Dave" wrote in message
om...


I will only be recording myself, and theres no need for firewire since
im planning to stay at home. What would you recommend?

What has a Firewire connection got to do with staying at home ? If it's an
easy and effect way to connect your device, that's all you need to consider
!

geoff

From: (Dave)
Date: 1/17/05 5:35 A.M. Eastern Standard Time
Message-id:

Hello!

I am just about to buy myself a new PC. This time I won´t use it for
anything else than recording.

While reading your posts here about soundcards i tend to get very
confused. Seems like every card on the market gets both loved and
hated by this board. I was recomended the MOTU 828mkII by a friend of
mine, but after reading your comments I´m not so sure anymore. Im
leaning towards the EMU 1820M now.

I will only be recording myself, and theres no need for firewire since
im planning to stay at home. What would you recommend?

Q2:

For my new machine ill put in 2 SATA discs of 200 gig each. im
planning to use one as a sample libary and the other one for system
and recordings. Do you agree that this is the most efficiant way?



As well you should be a bit confused, there are lots to pick from and for the
most part they have only a few differences.
One thing I would ask of you is what are you planing with these recordings your
going to be making? Is it just something you want to bang around the house
with? Are you wanting to turn it into a business? And if so what are you going
to be recording? Everyday Rock, Pop bands? As you can see there is a lot to
think about here, also what do you want to spend on this investment? Please
factor in your whole budget, including room construction, wiring etc. how you
want to get rid of bad sounds and so on.

On 2005-01-17, Arny Krueger wrote:

Nahh, every sound card has strong points and weak points. We just know
something about both their strong and weak points.

What are the weak points of the M-Audio Delta cards?

I wanted to get a MOTU device at one point, but I also want to
contribute to Linux driver development and MOTU is one of those
companies that seems to actually be opposed to any such thing.

Even if I could get over my fear of unicorns, I don't think I could
buy a product from a company that's been hostile to the Alsa group.
I'm sure that's not an issue for many people, but it's a complete
showstopper for me. I'd no more buy from them than I'd eat at
a restaurant where the chef spits in my food.