Some people here are funny AND uneducated. Humor.

How about buying good audio interface with top notch converters and close to no latency, if you have the money (RME, Motu, Apogee, Metric Halo, PrismSound, etc). You WILL also notice the (AD/DA) difference!

Also get good (balanced) cables and good monitors. Your setup is not stronger than your weakest link.

 

Now I'm confused. Please explain that.Monitors have nothing to do with conversion.

 

I think the point trying to be made is your money is better spent on good monitors and room treatment. You wont need top notch converters if you aint got any hardware and doing the above will give you more of an accurate representation of what your hearing thus allowing you to make better choices and improve your mixes. If your looking to improve then this is the best thing you can do.

 

On a forum linked to WAREZ.....

OHHHH somebody keeps leaving the IRONY on....

yea, considering the EXPLICIT point of the OP was "BUDGET"

your whole post just totally canceled itself out.

 

sorry for the hijack but what do you guys think about this card, the thing that i like most is the built in headphone amp, i just got a sennheiser hd 650 and i have to use a headphone amp when i use it on my laptop.

http://www.amazon.com/PCI-Express-XONAR-ESSENCE-STX-90-YAA0C0-0UAN00Z/dp/B001OV789U

but i wonder how its ASIO drivers compare to the EMU 1212M and its "Hardware-accelerated effects: Over 600 standalone and E-MU Power FX VST plug-in effects with no CPU overhead".

http://www.amazon.com/Creative-70EM898206000-1212M-Pci-Express/dp/B002VDMUQ6

 

what do you plan to use it for? just driving your HP and listening to music or recording? because for recording I'll choose something else than the asus...

 

the sound will be different (some have more EQing than other i.e multimedia vs "pro") but the quality when reading is the same...so the OP should be precise as to what he really means here..

 

for mixing in ableton, driving my hp, and listening to music, no recording, i have no issue if it doesn't have that acceleration feature for vst's as i have a very fast cpu. I like it because then i dont have to connect my headphone amp to the sound card, then my headphones to the amp, too many cables, and then when i want to use my headphones on my laptop i have to disconnect the headphone amp from my desktop, so to avoid all that and have my headphone amp on my laptop all the time then i would prefer the asus card.

 

yes, the drivers M-audio asiox64 are crappy , RMEx64 are very gOOd *yes*
--
sG

 

in my experience ASUS Xonar have relatively high latency. Shame. Much higher than Creative for example, though Xonar sound better imo, and their drivers are straightforward whereas Creative still issue updates called 00045556.111444.332

I haven't used the headphone amp on my (very cheap) asus, but it gets good reviews. All much of a muchness, I suspect. Can't expect too much variation for relatively so little money, I guess - but Creative don't have a headphone amp? So....
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?

 

well reading your post it seemed to me you were mistaking the "frequency response" of the audio interface (some have more bass or a scooped mid range etc) for the way they render the file they read (i.e how it's generated)...at a given rate, one audio interface will not read an audio file better or worse than another...so whatever the card, the quality when reading a file is the same, it just depends on your file/your audio system...but then as you said what you'll hear will be different for they dont have the same internal EQing (but I wouldn't say it has an impact on the "quality", it's more about your tastes in this case).

 

Well, by quality I was getting at frequency range, and the D/A conversion, for example.

There's surely a difference between cheap and expensive, isn't there? And not just "how it sounds"? Surely there is a better "quality" output from an expensive audio card than a cheap onboard one? Ultimately it's a subjective thing, but there's surely objective measures of why expensive audio kit is better than cheap stuff?

 

the frequency range of audio soundcards is way beyond what we can hear, so for differences in that department, your audio system will make a difference.
We cannot be sure but with a truly flat EQing most sound card will certainly sound the same when reading a simple audio files provided it's done on the same audio system, but as said before most are actually slightly (or heavily for some) colouring the sound. Besides, dont lose track of what's really important, the characteristics of your audio card are nothing compared to the influence of the acoustic of the room you're in and the quality of your speakers (they are the weak links for most people).
but as to what accounts for the price difference, it is IMO the quality and amount of time spent to ensure the stability of the drivers (expensive card are usually very stable whatever you throw at them and yet provide a very low latency), then ofc you'll have better AD/DA converters (whatever the price of these!), a lot of IN/OUT, (analog) preamps, effects etc...but all these are useless if you have bad drivers.

 

My first sound card was an AWE 32 from Soundblaster, it was a good starter card back then, but when i bought my soundcard in recent years, i was warned that Soundblaster wasn't a good choice. I opted for the M-Audio Delta 2496, cheap, and the clarity i find to be great for me. I don't care too much for technical babble, it sounds good, job done.

@subGENRE: Never seemed to have much trouble with my M-Audio ASIO drivers, do you think it would be worth checking out some replacements? You say RME are good?

EDIT: oh, RME drivers for RME cards! my bad

 

the problem with Maudio is that on some machines it works flawless and on others...well...it's like flipping a coin!
RME has very good drivers indeed (and yet sometimes they have problems too, ...but overall nothing like Maudio)

 

some monitors can mykal.
for instance a buddy of mine has a setup where he goes out of the digital out from his computer into a set of Roland DM-2100's
they are 2.1 powered monitors with digital inputs.
so in that case, his monitors actually do the conversion.

hope what i said before wasn't too confusing, what i meant was that i've seen setups with alot better gear than my own, but mine still ends up making better recordings than theirs because my room treatment is correct, too many people end up buying "the best gear" and then stick it in a square reflective room and wonder why their mixes still sound like shit.

 

well i got the asus xonar and im very happy with it, nice flat eq, asio latency is a little high (30ms), but with some latency compensation in ableton it goes down to 13 ms easily, of course it can go lower but with more cpu usage. over all it performs well, i have no complaints, powers my sens nicely, cpu usage in ableton is never excessive with an i7, and drivers hasnt crashed once. *yes*

 

Proper room treatement is the key.

A soundblaster with a great room will sound better than a RME in a crappy room.

 

That's where The Munk Machine started as well. AWE 32!
AWE-32 with a crappy stereo
Then RME ADI-8 Pro NS-10 and other crappy speakers...
Then Fireface - Mackie HR 824s
Then Metric Halo
and now Lavry DA-11 with Genelecs

OVER THE COURSE OF 17 YEARS!

If you are just starting out get whatever-matches-your-budget stuff... train your ears, then move on to the better stuff.

... A Lavry DA-11 is just as useless/useful as the on-board sound on a macbook pro for the untrained ear.

 

If u only need some DSP power see this.

http://www.youtube.com/user/DJVespers?blend=1&ob=0#p/u/15/5J58CfeTRjo