Audiophile 2496... assist me in my purchase please!!!

[fono22]

I'm about to buy an Audiophile 2496 sound card for my computer. Basically I want to be able to record guitar and vocal tracks here at home on me old comp.

I'm relatively new to the recording idea, however I have decided definitely to buy an Audiophile 2496, however... could you people tell me what I would need to record songs. I have a RG 7321 and a Digitec RP50 effects unit.

From the pictures, I don't see any guitar lead input to the sound card... will I need to purchase additional adapters in order to plug in? Also, is my effects unit enough to plug into the card or am I going to need a better preamp?

Sorry for these really simple questions, just want to be sure of everything before I purchase the card of the internet!

Cheers

Lance

[red5]

The sound card has RCA ins and outs on it, and an adapter with another pair of RCA in and out and S/PDIF and I think it has XLR too, I forget.

You might need an adapter to plug your speakers in if you use PC speakers. I'd actually suggest buying an old receiver from the late 70s or early 80s if you don't have one for the computer already and some decent speakers and you can plug straight in with a RCA cable. It's so worth it - I've been doing that for years now and my PC sound is great. I'll gladly find you something if you're interested...

I'd get a mixer where you can run the stereo RCA output to the card and plug the mics or line out straight into the mixer, which I am sure you would find both useful to record with and it would make it much more convienent as you can plug stuff into the mixer. Then get a recording program like wavelabs or cubase or whatever you plan to use to record.

My old computer has the Audiophile 2496. The computer died before I got a chance to record on it, but I run it to an early to mid 70s Mcintosh receiver and the sound quality of that card is spectacular for a $100 sound card. Much better than the Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum I had in there before which I had chopiness issues with as well as far inferior sound quality - muddy lows and poor highs.

In my new system I have an Sound Blaster X-Fi which is much better quality than any Creative sound card or copy I have ever used in the past but still not as good as the Audiophile, but I am going to keep it because it's louder and my receiver is pretty quiet.

[fono22]

Thanks very much Red5. You are a wealth of information and if you don't mind, I'd like to ask you more questions in the future.

I'll let you all know how I get on. Suggestions for a mixer anyone?

[erikm5150]

For mixers, go for 4-bus mixers like:

soundcraft compact 4 or compact 10
yamaha MG12/4
behringer 1204 i hear from other people is decent, but only go for this one if you can't find the above mentioned ones, or if you are on a budget.

Bascially, get a 4-bus mixer with good preamps. The extra 2 busses will make routing and recording a whole lot easier

These mixers have "good enough" preamps in them. they'll make a difference in your recordings.

Your input chain will go like this:

guitar -> digitech -> mixer -> soundcard line-in -> audio recording software.

[red5]

Originally Posted by fono22

Thanks very much Red5. You are a wealth of information and if you don't mind, I'd like to ask you more questions in the future.

I'll let you all know how I get on. Suggestions for a mixer anyone?

Ask me whatever, I'll be glad to help out. I haven't used a great deal of high quality sound cards or anything, but I do know the output on the Audiophile card is better than any CD player I own and I've heard they really do record just as well

Send me a message sometime to get my attention if you need anything. They killed the network here at school / work, so it makes forum browsing quite slow and I'm never home unfortunately ;(

Both the soundcraft and yamaha mixers look pretty nice. I would take erikm5150's suggestion of a 4 bus mixer as you do have multiple inputs on the audiophile that you can use to record multiple tracks at once with so you can still mix them down later. If you record everything one at a time it won't really matter but the ability is still there enabling you to record multiple tracks at once.