I am in the middle of moving and had to re-enable the on-board sound for an Asus board with Realtek HDaudio.

I was surprised when I heard the audio of known and well listened to songs. The sound seems much clearer and defined than the firewire Edirol FA-101. Same output level, just more defined.

Setup at 24bit, 48000Hz. The new driver allows a maximum of 192kHz.

 

Yeah, sounds nice.. it is afterall 'HD'..

...until you start trying to compile large DAW projects packed with VST's.

*no*

 

I want to do a side-by-side comparison once I get settled in and unpacked. I was listening to some more material and could swear I am hearing L1 or L2 type technology which could be the well defined sound..

 

Pro tip: Buy a dedicated audio interface (RME, Motu, Metric Halo, Apogee, Prism Sound, etc etc).

 

No doubt.. But for those who need a decent audio output source in a pinch, keeping your audio drivers up to date could be a time and project saver. Almost all DAWs allow transfer of project material regardless of audio source when done properly. I always keep a text log of plug-ins and midi files to recreate a project for whatever reason...

 

I see often a lot of people suggest $2000 audio interfaces.

But, let's be real....there are a lot of people who compose music strictly with MIDI and the only audio they will be tracking are vocals. I just don't see how such an expensive piece of equipment is practical in instances like that.

 

To some level I agree. I sat with a shitty audio interface for the longest of time. But it seems you haven't heard really good converters yet. The better AD/DA converters you have the better you hear things (and thus make better sound design, better mixes and mastering, if that's your thing). Not only that but you get really low latencies and makes it easier on your CPU (relocating audio processing workload).
Just saying.

Nm. Move along.

 

No I agree, the sound quality from good AD/DA conversion isn't what I am actually debating. I was mostly addressing the latency. And honestly I never used a soundcard that was over $150 in my life. And while I wouldn't argue a high end audio interface will indeed provide minimal latency when tracking audio in...

I'm not sure what the benefits of a high end dedicated audio interface would be if working strictly with MIDI or audio that is already loaded into RAM
as opposed to say a regular soundblaster card with ASIO4ALL drivers for example..

Not trying to be pretentious, if anybody can go further into detail that would be great.

 

In a pinch, any decent audio interface will make do for most situations. My issue with high end audio interfaces is the driver support if any. The other is the poorly coded drivers which usually take forever to get resolved.

If you are just producing demos and sound for commercial spots, any decent audio interface will do once you figure out the quality and latency limitations. This is where good software plug-ins are put to use to level and sweeten your project.

I almost purchased the MOTU system years ago but decided to hold off until the product line was solid. Still not so affordable for at home use but a good purchase for anyone with the means to do so.