M-Audio Or Soundblaster Creative

Darren Wonnacott · #1 03-04-2006, 05:42 PM

Hey,

I just wondered if someone could tell me which of these soundcards would be better for recording:

Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2 (PCI)

M-Audio Firewire Audiophile.

Thankyou in advance

Darren Wonnacott.

kennydoe · #2 03-04-2006, 05:45 PM

I'm using an M-Audio firewire 410 and it works very well. can't speak for the creative. Go with which ever is faster.

~K

Darren Wonnacott · #3 03-04-2006, 06:45 PM

Hey,

The Soundblaster has a better input and output latency than the
M-Audio Soundcard I have.

So does this mean the soundblaster card is better than the M-Audio one?

Thanks for your help

Darren

razorsuppository · #4 03-04-2006, 09:27 PM

I use the M-Audio 2496. It was sort of a pain in the ass to get all the drivers to work at first, but I have no other complaints - considering the low price. www.myspace.com/mattroberts , go there if you want to hear some recordings I did with it. I also used a Behringer mixer and a Shure SM57.

Darren Wonnacott · #5 03-05-2006, 04:28 AM

Hey Matt,

Thanks for your help!

The recordings sound great!

Darren

kennydoe · #6 03-05-2006, 04:43 AM

i just finished a recording that had 21 tracks going at once in the last section and there was no latency whatsoever...is that a valid test?

~K

razorsuppository · #7 03-06-2006, 03:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darren Wonnacott

Hey Matt,

Thanks for your help!

The recordings sound great!

Darren

I'm glad you dig the recordings, thanks. I kinda have latency issues, but I multitrack and run only 384 mb of ram, so I doubt it has anything to do with the sound card. Which M-Audio soundcard did you plan on getting?

Darren Wonnacott · #8 03-06-2006, 12:00 PM

I planned on getting the M-Audio Firewire Audiophile

Thanks

Darren

Polaris20 · #9 03-13-2006, 03:04 PM

Anything Creative is craptacular. stick with M-Audio.

JESTER700 · #10 03-13-2006, 05:54 PM

+1 on the M-Audio. Of the two, I mean. I'm partial to Echo meself...

erikm5150 · #11 03-21-2006, 06:56 PM

Stay AWAY from Creative for PC recording.
go with M-Audio

the latency with creative is lower because it is PCI and PCI as an interface will give the lowest latencies compared to other ineterfaces such as firewire.
It doesn't mean the creative is good for audio recording. Soundblasters aren't made for that, they're made for games and music "enjoyment". The drivers are not written specifically with streaming audio in mind.

The m-audio is made for audio recording, so its drivers are written for that purpose. Plus, m-audio has a good track record for stable drivers.

JESTER700 · #12 03-21-2006, 08:31 PM

So, why not consider the PCI versio of the audiophile?

red5 · #13 03-21-2006, 09:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darren Wonnacott

Hey,

The Soundblaster has a better input and output latency than the
M-Audio Soundcard I have.

I have a $100 Audiophile and I can set it to half the latency of ANY card creative has made to date assuming your system will support such low latency. If it's firewire (or usb2) it will have much higher latency than PCI, so I'd suggest PCI.

I've always been trashing the sound quality of the Creative cards such as the Live, and Audigys (they're the same in terms of quality) because the highs are non existant and the lows are very muddy and the very low frequencies are not there. I have the X-Fi however in my new system and it is much much better than any other Creative sound card that I have ever used but still not quite as good as the Audiophile (which is cheaper too btw) in terms of sound quality, but I will keep it in there for the sole reason that it is louder and my receiver isn't very powerful. Also Creative cards tend to make plenty of popping noises when you record on them and distort pretty easily, so I would not recommend one for recording.

The drivers for either are both very stable and will not be an issue there, but the M-Audio mixer utility is certainly useful if you plan to record. The only real problem with the card, which is pretty minor, is that the drivers do not provide a master volume in the windows mixer so your volume keys on the keyboard probably won't work.

Drew · #14 03-21-2006, 09:21 PM

I could have sworn I posted here... My computer came stock with a Creative Audigy 2Z, and I still bought a M-Audio Firewire 410 to record through. The Creative wasn't quite as bad as Red5's making it out to be, but it didn't have nearly the input power as the M-Audio, so unless I turned up seriously loud while recording, I'd have to crank tracks within my multitracker, which introduced rather a lot of noise.