Hi everyone
 
I need some advice on buying an audio interface for my daughter. She likes to sing and play acoustic guitar and wants to start recording. I just got her x3, an i5 laptop with 6gb of ram and I'm in the process of getting an external hard drive.
 
I've got around £300 left to get both the hard drive and interface. Can you guys suggest anything?
 
Thanks
Si

If the computer has an eSATA port, that would be the fastest transfer protocol for an external drive.
 
The next best choice would be a USB 3 port, and an external USB 3 drive.
 
In either of the above flavors, a 2 TB drive runs around $100-$120, last time I checked.  I use a Seagate external drive, and it has worked flawlessly for the past couple of years.
 
So, for an audio interface, I would suggest a USB 2 interface, in the $150-$200 range.  That would give you a couple of mic inputs with pre-amps, hopefully +48 phantom power, and decent quality.
 
So, both the above would end up being within your budget.
 
DO make sure that the audio interface has drivers for Windows 8.  A lot of the cheaper ones are cheaper because they are essentially discontinued, meaning they will not get any new drivers, and likely only have drivers for older Windows versions, like XP or Vista, or even ME.
 
When you do settle on an audio interface, I would suggest starting with the following settings, as a reasonable starting point that balances performance and system demands:
 
Sample Rate - 44.1 k or 48 k (both Sonar and audio interface Sample Rates must match, either one should be OK)
Sonar Driver Mode - ASIO
Audio interface ASIO Buffer Size - 128
 
Shoot for Sonar-reported latency values of around 10 milliseconds or a little bit less, for the Total Roundtrip latency.  If you run lower than that, you may have dropouts and/or crackles and such.  If you run higher than that, you may begin to hear the latency and have a miserable time of it.
 
I would also recommend you download and run either DPC Latency Checker or LatencyMon, with Sonar not running, to check your system's basic ability to handle streaming audio processing, such as with Sonar.  Please note that as of the last time I checked, DPC Latency Checker did not run correctly in Windows 8, while LatencyMon works in both Windows 7 and Windows 8.
 
Here is the link for DPC Latency Checker: http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml
 
And, LatencyMon: http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon
 
Hope any of the above helps, 
 
Bob Bone
 

I would suggest you the Roland QUAD-CAPTURE, Roland drivers are the best, it works great with X3 and a ground lift could safe you from ground loops problems.

Si,
From just down the road in Cheshire.
I've enjoyed using the Focusrite Scarlett 2i4. This has two nice mic pre-amps, which gives one for voice one for guitar then. You don't mention if you have mics though for recording the acoustic guitar, so I'm not sure if you need these in your budget too. These might be higher up the priority list than the external drive, as the laptop could suffice. The scarlett comes in a nice colour too, which may or may not be important !
 

I'd recommend the Scarlett series as well. My 18i6 has been absolutely trouble free since I got, was easy to install, has very nice mic pres and Focusrite support is great. Also I think they are a UK based company so you would be buying local.
 
The 2i2 and 8i6 would both fit in your price range and they are pretty much the same unit I have without as many connections BUT you also get a "loopback" feature (8i6 only I think) which I think is something a younger person might appreciate. It basically let's you run a channel from other programs directly into your DAW wihtout any wires or extra weirdness so she could input youtube vids or WMP straight into Sonar very easily for practice or whatever.
 
The Roland unit mentioned is nice but more expensive for what you get and personally at that price point I'd be looking at a MOTU instead who are probably a little more reliable of a company than Roland at this point.
 
No need for us to be nice to them anymore now that they aren't our parent company. They still make very nice instruments though but I don't think they were really cut out for this whole DAW game.

Also in regards to the HDD... with that laptop, unless it has an internal SSD (Solid State Drive) you may be better off replacing the internal drive with something faster. 7200RPM is recommended for DAWs but they have 10,000RPM drives now which are obviously even faster. The hard drives are usually what screws up DAWs on high powered laptops... well that and bloatware so try to do a clean install of windows. With the Windows license that came with the laptop you can use any copy of the SAME version of Windows (eg: Win7 Pro 64 preinstalled on the lappy will require a Win7 Pro 64 disc). If you do not have a like disc available there are methods online of stripping out the proprietary install gobbledygook of like Windows discs  (if you have a Win7 Home disc but the lappy is Win7 Pro then you can strip it out to the ISO and install Pro on the lappy). Also MS has recently released downloadable ISOs of all versions for exactly this purpose (but you still need the license/serial number from the laptop).
 
That way you don't have all that bloatware futzing up the recording process. Also there are optimization considerations like disabling power management features while recording. You may already know about some of that stuff though so I'll let this post be unless you ask for more info. Cheers. You sound like a cool dad.
 

Beepster
The Roland unit mentioned is nice but more expensive for what you get and personally at that price point I'd be looking at a MOTU instead who are probably a little more reliable of a company than Roland at this point.

 
Please give us any reference that supports your statement about Roland and MOTU. Personaly I think that Roland QUAD-CAPTURE is really worth the price and Focusrite and also Motu and others are also nice option. But I just would like to say, that I am just happy QUAD-CAPTURE user and it is the best audio interface I have ever used.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention TASCAM's US-322 and US-366 interfaces. As TASCAM and Cakewalk are both part of Gibson there is definitely self-interest at play. However, when I needed an interface for seminars I requested a US-366 to evaluate, and was very impressed. It's now what I'm using with my laptop (for my home studio, I'm still using the V-Studio).
 
What I like about it:
 
Mic pres. There are two combo jack (XLR mic/TRS line) inputs and they can both handle phantom power. The circuitry is discrete, not op amps, and the frequency response extends to 60kHz.
SPDIF digital I/O. Both optical and coaxial (US-366 only - see below).
The high-Z input for guitar is 1 Megohm so there's virtually no loading.
Very solid construction and compact size. I take it on the road, so both matter.
Onboard DSP. Compression, de-esser, reverb, and EQ as well as a mixer. The main use is for situations where, for example, the singer wants to hear the voice with some reverb while recording. One seemingly minor but very cool feature is that there's a button you hit to show/hide the DSP and mixer applications on-screen - you don't have to root around in a programs menu or find a shortcut.
Headphone amp. This is subjective, but it sounds better than average to me.
Inputs are on the front. A small point, but it leads to a neater setup.
 
Limitations:
 
No MIDI in or out. Granted most MIDI these days uses USB, but if you have devices with 5-pin DIN MIDI connectors, you'll need a separate MIDI interface.
Doesn't play nice with ASIO4ALL. Having ASIO4ALL installed on your computer interferes with TASCAM's drivers (which are far better for ASIO anyway, so I don't see any advantage to having ASIO4ALL installed).
You can't enable phantom power for each input individually. To be fair, virtually all relatively low-cost interfaces work similarly.
Only one headphone jack. If you're engineering someone who wants to monitor what they're doing, you'll need to connect a headphone amp to a line out.
 
The main difference between the -366 and -322, aside from $50 ($200 MSRP vs. $150 MSRP, respectively) is that the -322's maximum sample rate is 96kHz and there's no digital I/O. The -366 has optical and coaxial SPDIF I/O and handles sample rates up to 192kHz.
 
The interface market is quite competitive, and there are lots of options at reasonable prices. TASCAM interfaces had never really been on my radar until I joined Gibson, but I have to say the US-322 and -366 are very well engineered and sound excellent. And of course, going forward the drivers will always be tested thoroughly with Sonar.

Focusrite rocks that is all!
I have a Saffire Pro 40.
It's totally stable, it has a loopback facility (many interfaces don't). It has zero latency monitoring (although I use this less and less as it's fast enough).
 
Latency is minimal, much better than most other interfaces, ASIO drivers the best there are in any sound interface (and can handle multiple applications where other sound interfaces can't, seems to be a unique feature).
Oh and the preamps are just great.
Did I say Focusrite rocks?

I would second Beepster's comment as well ... Focusrite are a good ( UK based ) company to work with if anything does go wrong. Their e-mail responses to technical issues has been very good for me.  I can also guess that Si's daughter will recognize all the artists that use Focusrite kit.
And just to balance things out my Tascam US 144 mk2 is still doing very well also ! ( I bought this before my Focusrite interface )