On the topic of "why not to use Soundblasters for serious audio work", I wonder if the newer Audigy cards are still pushing their "bit perfect" S/P DIF signals through their internal DSP circuitry and resampling algorithms like the SB Live did?

You might take a look at the EMU 1212M. Street prices is around $200, stereo in/out (analog), S/PDIF in/out (coax or optical) ADAT In/Out (but not if you're using optical S/PDIF); has MIDI, other nice features. Add $100 and get a bundle with the "Emulator X" virtual sampler included. Very nice specs, low latency (with ASIO; WDM support is not working well yet, according to many posts). This card sounds significantly better than the Audigy line. My next DAW will use an Emu 1820M (more ins and outs than the 1212M, but same sound quality). Read the review in Sound-on-sound; search this forum for posts.

There is also a Terratec card (also stereo) which has gotten good comments; at least one webstore is selling them for around $130 (also search this forum).

Good luck,

Jim

Well, all I can say is, I was one that thought my Audigy w/live drive would be no different then using a high end card like a emu or m-audio, but soon found myself limited and cramped for input/output options as well.. latency was horrible with it.. perhaps better with the new Plat 2, who knows.. but gosh, there is no sense forking over $200 smacks for SB, when you can use that and perhaps add a little more to buy you a real audio recording sound card..

M-Audio Delta series cards have just hugely dropped in price due to E-mu releasing new ones. Check them out, they are great solid pieces of kit.

Regards,

Neil.

$279.99 w/ free shipping for my M-Audio Delta 66 w/Omni breakout box off eBay..

on ebay, their selling cheap.. here';s one auction selling for $225 (buy now)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=41787&item=3736335702&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

Speaking from Experience:

Have previously used SB Live! with Live! Drive - sold it on as it caused loads of errors in Windows 98SE.
Bought an M-Audio Delta 1010LT. Awesome. Ok, so you don't get the sounds but the sound quality is fault-less. Zero-Latency on 96Khz, and a nice and low 3ms on 44.1kHz. That was running on the following hardware:
Abit KT7A Raid (VIA Chipset), 512MB Corsair Memory, Western Digital HD, Windows XP Pro with loads of extra software not necessarily music related, as well as a modem card. Ati Radeon 64MB VIVO AGP video card.
AMD 1.2GHz CPU.

Now running on Asus A7V8X (1st generation) - problem with PSU dammaged old board.

Just built a PC for a friend who against my advice was hell-bent on the Audigy 2. So I installed it with latest drivers. AMD Athon XP 2500+, 512MB Corsair Value RAM, Seagate HD, Windows XP Pro. Mobo based on nForce2 chipset.
I can safely say the Audigy 2 continues the fine tradition of piss-poor sound quality and unrelenting driver issues. Scream of death occurs shortly after loading up a few soundfonts. Playback is dull and lifeless and sounds almost distant. Through a proper high-end hi-fi (not some ****ty midi-system), you really need to turn up the volume as the output level is very low. Software control panel is aweful. It takes ages to find what you need. Frequenty hangs with a Roland USB MIDI keyboard plugged in. ASIO Latency (it still only supports ASIO at 48kHz!) is a disgusting 730ms using the DirectX drivers, and a fairy crap 21ms with the creative ASIO driver. Have tried other drivers and results are no better. Best performance was in Cubase SX, but still way off the mark.

A totally useless card for the professional. Don't even consider it unless you only want it for games. Buy an M-Audio card. Prices are around 50% of what I paid for mine a year or two ago.

Have also used M-Audio Audiophile 2496 on another PC, and again sound quality was awesome. Echo Layla is also good - replaced Audiophile with this rack-mount card. Mixer is not as good as the M-Audio but it has a nice sound and proper balanced inputs compared to the 1010LT (with the break-out cable).

I hope this is of some help to people. This is not meant to be an attack on creative, I just think they need to pull their finger of their arse and write some proper drivers, and design the card better - it's not like they haven't had enough time - this is just the latest in a long line of similar cards. I think perhaps they should just stop trying to do to many things with one card. Let EMU handle the pro-audio and let Creative to the cards for the gamers.

an m-audio's audiophile 24-96

is soo cheap and works just great if you only need a basic set up,

sounds just as good as something costing 4 times as much,

just figure out what you need from it, both now and in the future. then investigate the options (its your cash right) and then make the buy.

have fun

I kind of like my Audigy 2 Platinum Pro. My only complaint is that the low latency drivers only work at 48k, but I knew that before I bought it.

Why do I like it? I normally use the digital in with a Roland preamp that has a digital out, and into Roland monitors with a digital in, so the sound quality is the same as anything else I might use - perfect.

Here's what I like:

1) I get as low as 2ms latency without problems, though I normally use about 5 just for safety.

2) The hardware soundfont engine is 64 voice polyphonic and has the velocity filter routings that are in the soundfont 2.1 spec but missing from the regular Soundblaster 2.0 spec. It sounds gorgeous. I use Awave Studio 9.x which when combined with the Audigy 2 gives you a hardware 64 voice sampler which can read almost any format of sample. I like that I can embed the soundfonts into Sonar sequences.

3) The hardware reverb and effects are accessable from the cakewalk mixer as aux sends which is way cool and not available with any other sound card that I know of.

4) There is full low latency ASIO surround sound support (though 24/96 is only stereo).

5) Each input and output has it's own ASIO driver so you never really have to mess around with the Creative Labs mixer to do input or bouncing routings. If you have different things plugged into the analog and SPDIF inputs, say a mic and a POD, you can record them at the same time and select and monitor them directly from Sonar. The "ASIO outs available as ASIO ins" thing means you can record your mix straight into Soundforge if you're using the hardware sampler voices and hardware reverb.

The 48k thing used to be frustrating, but Sony CD Architect has made it a piece of cake. I just record at 48k and master at 48k/24 bits. CD Architect does a high quality sample and bit rate conversion on the fly.

I know that nobody else seems to like this card, and I'm not evangelical about it or anything, but I really wouldn't trade it for anything else. If I inherited a system with a different sound card, the first thing I would do would be to replace it with the Audigy 2 Platinum Pro.

Oh yeah, another thing I like about the Audigy 2 Platinum Pro:

The ASIO drivers don't go through the mixer. They are always on and affected only by the master volume. With the little Creative Labs mixer, you can have your Sonar volume cranking, and keep system noises down at regular levels where they should be, or even mute them if you want, without affecting your Sonar output. With other audio cards this always drove me nuts: you'd get a nice level going for your sequence, then start doing something else only to have the system noises blowing your head off!

Mlockett:

I'd get about -50dB of self-noise

I'd noticed that when using my SB Audigy 2, but I'd always thought that was just regular computer noise.

I have been defending my Audigy 2 for a while, but I now wish I'd gone for the M-Audio Delta 66. *slaps forehead*

To be fair, it does have good game support but I've now found that making music is a lot more fun and have pretty much stopped gaming altogether.

Anyone wanna buy an Audigy 2?

SG