Soundcards question.

ORIGINAL: DreamzCatcher

Ok it goes like this.

if I plug in HD synth (virus..) directly through two soundcards (one by one) lets say, Soundcard 1 = Pulsar, Soundcard 2 = Audigy...

I record the same riff exactly, at 44.1, 24bit on both soundcards.

will there be any difference in the sound quality ?
to be more precise, if I will turn the phase of one of them vs the other, will there be a total silence? (phase cancellation)

If you are talking about recording something from the inputs of the sound card then no, they will never be exactly the same. Each sound card will differ in sone way. Even if the chips are the same the analog input stage may be different on one then the other, even the driver could make a difference. There are all kinds of other elements of design of a sound card that can change it's sound. That's why you can find a $100 and a $1000 sound card that use the same chips but sound different.

If you are talking about a softsyth those don't go through the sound card.. only out. So any sound difference would just be monitoring not the actual recording (if it's recorded at all).

ORIGINAL: DreamzCatcher

thanks haha, I kinda knew the answer already, different convertors... but I'm in a bet and lots of money involved lol, so even tho I know the answer, I need some reliable answer to increase my confidence.

any more info about how do they actually change the sound practically?

I'm not an expert but I'm sure there is lots of information on the web. I know the sample rate clock is a key element and good ones are expensive so those don't get used in cheap cards. Analog components in the input stage have to be high quality and the input stage has to be a clever design to keep noise out and alter the input signal as little as possible. There is a filter in the A/D stage that has to be well designed, Apogee got their start in the business selling just this part as an upgrade to high end (at the time) digital recorders. They later made the entire converter and sold that as an external unit... the rest is history. Even the way the board of the sound card is layed out and how all the chips connect is a fine art and does affect things like keeping noise out, keeping the clock stable, etc. Digital audio gear design is not easy.. it takes skill, good components, and some real talent to get it right. There is a big gap in quality between making it "work" and getting it really good, even when using the same chip.

When you get a consumer grade card all those things are designed to just "function" and be cheap to make. When you get a high end card they put a lot of development into each part and tested it under real world conditions to make sure the sound is as good as it can be all the way from end to end.

Depending on the Audegy... if its Gen 1, then you will definitely hear a difference on the output due to the fact that the first gen Audegy's had a known problem with playback of 44.2khz (it gets resampled to 48 and poorly at that).

An Audegy 2 and better will give you very good results and you might be hard pressed to find a more pleasing sound for the money (they average about 100 bucks).

I know nothing about the other card you mentioned so have no basis for a quality comparison.

As for a VST working in Sonar for instance, this is all done via the CPU so if its in the same computer, it will sound identical regardless of what card you use for mixing (setting aside the monitoring output difference).

However if you use any DSP effects you will notice a marked improvement in performance with the Audegy over many cards that cost 3 or 4 times as much due to the hardware acceleration of DSP.

Cheers
Shad

ORIGINAL: DreamzCatcher

It leads me to another question,

since A/D always leaves some sort of noise...than hardware synth can't compete the quality of a Vsti, right? or wrong?(explain?)

Technically the software version would produce the more pure output and if noise is a problem recording with your sound cards input then yes the software version would not have that noise in the final product.

However, that's only a fair test if both the hardware synth and software synth produced the same sound. It's rare that would be the case and it's much better to have the perfect synth sound with some noise and damage then one that doesn't work with the song. Recording the analog output of a synth can also render some unexpected happy side effects. For example some of them have a output stage that is not very flat and may in fact fatten up the sound. Some folks have noticed this when they compare the SPDIF and analog outs of their synth, on some patches the analog outs sound better.

So the technically correct method is not always the most musical. Guitar players learned this right away when guitar amps were invented and they found out that by setting the gain stages "wrong" the thing sounded fantastic.