Cactus Music


CJ's blood pressure rises when he hears your using a Creative card... and for good reason too! 
Sonars TTS-1 has better sounds than those on the $4 chip. You need to go to it's GUI to explore the full potential. 

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• it is a very power-full sampler with its own characteristics. Therefore it is hard to recreate (cloning is a better word in this discussion) certain sounds from the SoundBlaster with other sound sources. I already put a lot of effort in recreating some sounds with other synths but did not succeed. 
• i do not have a lot of money, so before i try another card i want to look what is possible with the Sound Blaster

funk.. to be objective.. I used to use an AWE32 and SB-Live back in the day... this is 12 years ago.. YEP they did the job compared to an akai 950 etc..  *BUT* sadly that's then and not now... remember it was MIDI trigger, totally different from the ASIO based stuff.

a few on here will constantly / consistently slate stuff yet never had used it. it makes me smile, that they can talk about something yet never used it.. or worse slate me, be in the wrong and never admit they were wrong .. (using 100% cakewalk coded stuff outside sonar comes to mind )

the KX thing , like asio4all is a stop gap and not 100% fit for purpose.. just a work around and although people are telling you it to part with your money... thats not the case.

the soundcard you buy etc doesn't have to cost the earth (which is the angle more should take on here). I think people should look at that angle perhaps. What do you need the card for , live inputs , like vocals ? even then it doesn't have to have a lot of in's and outs.. currently what are you using that SB for? synth sounds etc.. no need for in's either, do that all inside the machine

*IF* you want to use the SB for solely midi and trigger SF2 samples then fine.. no biggy to upgrade etc.. but anything more.. then a SFZ / sf2 player can easily replicate what soundbanks you have on the card *AND* in true asio mode using native drivers.

creative aren't exactly known for their wonderful drivers , like a few more I could mention... 

m-audio/avid didn't listen to me for 3 months regarding their none working drivers.. cheers guys ;-)

people aren't telling you this so you part with your money, but if you are using KX then I know for a fact they are , what 7+ year old drivers? (2009 was the last update right? ) .. 4 years is a lifetime in pc etc. lifecycle.. and NO you don't have to spend a fortune on a card.

it's basically a false economy if you don't... much like folk on here who's specs are i7 - 16gb of ram etc.. top end gfx card.. yet feel to skimp on the sound card.. and spend serious money on everything else + DAW software.

spend a bit (not a fortune) on something 100% designed for music making and get on with making music.. it's that simple.. 

Well said Fog. I also have a fondness for CL's SB cards from way back when. 

It's certainly not about the money,SB cards cost more that most generic brands. I paid $300 for the Audigy II card truly thinking that for that kind of cash it would be the ultimate sound card. The problem was that in those days ( 2002) my only source to buy a sound card was from a computer store ( gamers) not an audio store. 

 It certainly has cool features -MIDI, SPDIF, 5 channels, 1/4 guitar jack for guitar, RCA for CD in a break out box on the FRONT of your computer.. yep , Very nice layout--- If it had good drivers I'd still be using it... but it doesn't, period,,,, game over. They never even bothered to release something better. The company is pooh as far as delivering what they promise. I will say that I still use it and it's great for my office computer, watching movies and works fine for all things non pro audio ...but not Sonar ,Cubase ,or Reaper.. 

So It took the good people here on this forum ( Guitar Studio in those days)  a few months to convince me it was Pooh... I did everything you are doing, believe me, I have no money either and I'll try anything 3x first before I pull out the Visa card. I'm still workin' on it. M-Audio didn't work, Then I'm still on the fringes with my Tascam.. they are also sketchy drivers but so far so good . I'm in Sonar 5-8 hours a day right now with no issues ever. 
Good luck but I think you should move on, You can still use the sounds from the SB card by recording them as audio. Or using 2 computers. ( computers are free)  

My advice is to not get hung up on some certain synth sound,,, there's always something better on the other side.... of ,,,?? the ?? oh well .. somewhere..

im not big on soundblaster at all..but i will admit one thing.that post that fog just wrote was of the best ones ive read on here in a long time.
dude=respect.

thats was auesome.

great views.

John


Well said Fog. I also have a fondness for CL's SB cards from way back when. 

I did demo *TOTALLY* on an sb live, and the person I played it to thought it had been done in a pro-studio, he owned one.. it amused me.. much like the time he thought I had a sh-101 but it was a VST hehe . everything was sampled off sample cd's and "in the box".. so partly the eq etc was clean before I started.

I do think it was a good way to get started when say samplers were £1700... and vs an AWE that was maybe £300 upgraded to 28 meg (yer couldn't access the full 32!! ) .. but that time is long gone and £2000-5000 can easily get you a decent enough setup.

the thing i noticed with the soundblaster titanium x-fi (for in the box only) is i could get a high track count, loads of plug-ins ,a high sampling rate (88.2/96,000) with the latency buffer set to something like 60ms, and sonar would still do its thing, tried that with a m-audio 24/96, and with the buffers set high, sonars engine wouldn't budge, funny that

I used to really like the SB Live! back in the day. The first album I wrote, produced and released was made with the SB Live! and its onboard chip sounds, an old guitar and a cheap camera mic. We resampled all the SB sounds and messed it up. In the end it sounded horrible but that's because of me, not the SB Live!.

the album was released and sold out. No complaints here.

I haven't tried the drivers you are asking about, but I thought the Creative cards had WDM drivers? If not, I would check out what Bill suggest if you haven't already. I have heard a lot of positives (and some negatives) about using Creative cards with Asio4All.

Chregg, sounds like you were using both in WDM mode.. you'd probably find the m-audio thing worked better in asio mode, if that was the case.... also does that card have the control panel , by the clock like the 1010LT ? as you may find some settings there improve matters greatly.

no they were both asio fog, the driver for the sb were was the creative asio, and the m audio , m audio asio