S/PDIF vs. analog out

wiplala

edentowers


Why not just plug your zoom into the line in of your on-board sound card?

This is an option, of course. I guess I am just a bit stubborn  and always try to get my way. It just feels a bit of a waste to do the AD - DA -AD roundtrip when the zoom can spit out a digital signal, although I understand that probably there wouldn't be much difference in quality for me anyway. I paid for that and I want to put it into use. ANother point is that I dont have good soundcard yet where to plug it in anyway.

The USB MIDI keyboard will not have any latency itself but your sound card will and you should be able to test what it's capable of by loading up one of the demo projects from the additional content DVD.

But if I used a MIDI interface on a sound card, then the signal still has to be processed by the CPU and the sound has to be generated and sent back to the card. Is there really much difference between using a USB and MIDI interfaces?

If you'd asked questions here before buying we would probably have suggested a supplementary dedicated sound card/MIDI interface for Sonar.

This holds true, as it is for many things in life. But I guess the it is ok for starting up and learning things.

BTW, what is the difference between a good and bad sound card? They don't usually contain any DSP-s or synths in them - so am I right if I guess that it all comes down to the quality of AD-DA converters and the number of inputs/outputs? Or is there anything else (latency, speed, etc.)?

Cheers,
W.

Correct, now that sound cards no longer do the synth part or effects for the mix the only thing to evaluate is the sound quality both in and out. The A/D conversion is the big one if you record any analog sources but the D/A quality can affect how well you can hear things while mixing.  The "free" sound cards that are included in USB devices like guitar effects and microphones are not what you would want to use.  Most of them have no way to get sample rate clock in or out so you can't even use more then one at a time.  The best way to set up a recording PC is with only one device for audio I/O so there is only one driver and only one sample rate clock and that clock does not have to travel down a wire.  Everything else should connect to that one card via analog inputs.  If you use digital I/O you would want the other device to have both in and out so you can let the main sound card be the clock still.  This is not only better for sound but lets Sonar autoswitch sample rates as needed. If you have an external device with only digital out you can't do that anymore and the clock has to traval down a wire and you end up using the worst clock you own.

As for MIDI remember those drivers are not connected to the audio I/O driver in any way. Even if the drivers both install at the same time and are attached to the same card they are still not related.  So for example if you had a device that has both MIDI I/O and audio I/O over the same USB port you could set Sonar to ignore the audio I/O and just use the MIDI ports because those are separate drivers.  The ASIO limit of one driver does not apply to the MIDI drivers, ASIO is only for audio.

Getting the MIDI in to the PC is a very easy job for the computer and puts no load on it. The only part that requires some power is the sound generating (software synths).   Also, the sound card or MIDI interface makes no difference with how much power software synths require it all happens inside the PC.