Am I just looking for a regular sound card then? I looked at the other products listed in your review... all the firewire and USB stuff seem to be recording stuff. With strange big plus-sign like connctions and mic inputs and referenes to guitars and stuff.

If by "regular soundcard" you means something like your onboard soundcard or a soundblaster soundcard, then NO, I don't think we're communicating here.

Your onboard soundcard is not really good for recording for use in Sonar. if you want to do all the stuff you listed above, you need a soundcard designed for recording. actually, you're not going to get EVERYTHING you asked for in $100 recording soundcard, but it will be a start.

When I rarely use my mics, they both go to line in anyway

this must mean that you already have an external preamp? otherwise you can't plug a mic into a LINE LEVEL input. Mic's don't output enough power for LINE LEVEL inputs.

good latency. Any good soundcard should give me relatively zero latency right? As long as it's a big difference from my current 300ms latency

any "regular" soundcard is not going to give you good low latency. you'll need to spend at least $100 on a recording soundcard with quality drivers in order to get low latency.

so, the ability to use 2 mics for stereo were I get mics, would be nice; it'd be good to have the option. However, TOTALLY extra. I'd rather save money on more sound libraries.

then a PCI soundcard with LINE level inputs will be fine for you until you need to connect mics up. when you need to record a mic, then you'll need to buy an external preamp like a small mixer.

RCA inputs. I have 2 sets of L/R from the video card, I don't need anything better right? Besides, I don't see what I would use them for. Totally not interested.

I don't understand what your video card has to do with anything.

some final things to say again: desktop PC, all slots are PCI Express, and I've only got a PCIe 1x free. Got a firewire connection. USB is not totally out of the question if I must go external, but I'll need to get a USB hub too.

there are only a few soundcards which are designed for PCIe yet at this point. that will probably change in the near future, but at this time there aren't many and those that do exist are way out of your budget.
firewire is a good choice, but they're typically out of your budget as well.
usb is a good choice but they're more expensive than just a simple PCI card with simple 2 analog LINE inputs because there aren't many without mic pres on them.

bottom line.
if you want low latency for your softsynths, you'll need a recording soundcard.
if you can't use a PCI card, you'll have to buy a USB or Firewire card
here's something that will give you low latency without too much else:
http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/product/MAudio-Fast-Track-USB-Computer-Recording-Interface?sku=703606
however - if you plug it into a USB hub that will likely cause problems. you may have to unplug things while you're working on music

No, I doubt it's your fault. I just don't understand a lot of this audio stuff.

ORIGINAL: Beagle
Your onboard soundcard is not really good for recording for use in Sonar. if you want to do all the stuff you listed above, you need a soundcard designed for recording. actually, you're not going to get EVERYTHING you asked for in $100 recording soundcard, but it will be a start.

Ok, let's start here. First off, I raised my budget, more like $150, or $200 at max. Maybe we need to clear up this "recording stuff." To me, when i've been seeing all this stuff and I see "recording," I take that to mean...well, recording something like, a mic, an external source, electric guitar, boombox.... and that's not really what I'm looking for. I work with soft synths, EWQL SO Gold as a PLAY plugin into Sonar. I used to be working on a high-end bt 6-year old computer with integrated audio and that was working perfectly for me. The only reason I bought a new comptuer is beacuse I needed more Ram and needed x64. On this new computer, I also used its integreted audio, and it was just fine. Nothiner ever seemed to get taxed or have an issue. Only on my old computer and that was becuase of Ram filling up with my samples. Then something went wrong on my compy, and sonar doesn't want to work if there's a soft synth in. no idea why. *shrugs* All I need it for my synth to work in sonar, so that's why I thought maybe a regular sound card like, I dunno, creative's sound blaster X-fi titanium or something.

this must mean that you already have an external preamp? otherwise you can't plug a mic into a LINE LEVEL input. Mic's don't output enough power for LINE LEVEL inputs.

I don't know what a preamp is exactly, I looked it up...it's confusing. I think you can assume I don't have ANYTHING lol. I don't do audio stuff. The microphones I refer to are a PC microphone and a ancient hand-held mike that's got an adaptor on it so I can plug into computer. Maybe you're right about the line in. It's plugged into "mic" right now. On my old computer, i'm pretty sure i used line in and mic interchangeable. Maybe that's why mic input was really quiet sometimes, but I could be wrong.

any "regular" soundcard is not going to give you good low latency. you'll need to spend at least $100 on a recording soundcard with quality drivers in order to get low latency.

Alright. And I should clarify actually, by latency I'm referring to midi events from keyboard, the delay between pressing and hearing/showing up in sonar.

then a PCI soundcard with LINE level inputs will be fine for you until you need to connect mics up. when you need to record a mic, then you'll need to buy an external preamp like a small mixer.

ok, got it... and yeah, vid card isn't related lol.

here's something that will give you low latency without too much else:
http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/product/MAudio-Fast-Track-USB-Computer-Recording-Interface?sku=703606
however - if you plug it into a USB hub that will likely cause problems. you may have to unplug things while you're working on music

Ok, these external stuff is what confuses me, but I guess it's just the looks that's throwing me off. it looks like a recording thingy, no mention of sound playback or processing. So are you saying that IS a soundcard, just, it's got more stuff and that makes it a "Recording soundcard" as you call it? So it still acts like a regular soundcard like to playback my music and stuffs? it just...what, has more processing power or something?

Spectre,

into the breech again. The soundcard on your computer is good for listening to non-critical music, gaming, and warning beeps and such. You can run it concurrent with a better sound card - you just have to assign your recording software to the better interface.

What we are talking about is an audio interface that you can hook up to a speaker/amp so you can hear your glorious, selfproduced music over better than computer speakers. However, most people use them to input acoustic sound, hence most of them include i/o. At this point, you don't have to worry about input, just output. A real interface will also give you lower latency when playing softsynths (a built-in card has problems with that, as you have discovered).

For $200 you can get the Emu or M-audio. Both should work fine, once you get it set up. They also will allow you to record audio if you ever want/need to do that, but the main thing is that they will give you a nice signal out and let you play a softsynth in real time. Just ignore the inputs at this time.

If you are happy with computer speakers you'll have to get cables with the proper connections between the two. If you want to use your computer soundcard, too, you'll need a second set of them. But you'll probably like a set of better speakers/amp - 5 or more inch woofers.

Have a look at audiomidi page for recording. You are probably looking at a usb interface (firewire seems to be more and there doesn't seem to be any budget pcie units). I use a presonus fw unit with no problems and there is a cheap yamaha (PRICE TOO LOW TO PRINT), besides the other units listed.

hope this helps. It is confusing if you are coming from the music world rather than the recording world. But it ain't rocket science once you get the terminology down.

ah ok, yes thank you very much; yes that clears it up better. :)

the only thing that I still don't understand is, unless the interface has midi I/O, how would it drop my latency issue if my midi goes straight into the computer and this audio interface is external? It would seem to me like for that to work, my midi event goes into the computer through USb, somehow goes back out through usb into the interface, then back into the computer through usb. o.O doesn't sound liek that would be good for latency.....

you're sscaring me with the speaker thing though lol. I'd need a different connection? or even another set of speakers?

Because latency is caused by your round trip from your MIDI controller into the computer thru the software synth and out thru the soundcard. if the soundcard is not designed for low latency and has low latency drivers then it will slow down the time between when you press a key on the keyboard and the time you HEAR it coming from the sound card. it's not the MIDI input, it's the soundcard throughput that slows down the sound.

oh... ok I see. Hearing part doesn't concern me much though, more importantly is the midi input registering in sonar. I don't mind hearing late, because I can just mute if I want, but I'd like my playing on the keyboard registering asap into midi event in sonar.

Is that a different thing, or same explanation?

(and btw, this isn't questioning it and thus not advancing anywhere; just for mah eddycation and while I keep looking at the this stuff, the reccomendtations, looking at the webpages...)

That's completely different. you shouldn't have ANY noticable difference between the time you hit a key on the keyboard and the time it gets recorded in sonar (there's a very small difference, but we should be talking less than 1 msec). are you saying that you do have a difference?

should be instant? O.o

heck yeah, i have a latency of 1/3 to 1/2 a second. This is the latecny issue I've been talking about all along, lol. I guess I wasn't clear, i'm sorry. It's the same latency (or close enough) as the delay between pressing the note and hearing it. This my latency issue. When i've mentioend it before, I could be wrong, but I hear people say it's the integrated sound that is just slow... I need a soundcard or something if I want low latecny.

I use a yamaha MIDI to USB cable, UX16, and again, my sound is integrated realtek HD audio.

how are you measuring the time between when you press a key and the time it shows up in sonar?

no accurate way.

Mainly i just know that at 120 bpm, if I hit the note on the beat, I'll hear it / it'll register in sonar a beat later (roughly).

I've actually used that to my advantage a few times, and it has caused audible mistakes and rythm irregularities that gave me ideas for a better part.