What you say is of course true. The SB Live is nothing more than a toy in the world of pro audio but at least it has a price tag to suit. I have made a few small points below. I gather you own a Pulsar. What is it like. The specs look great I'll have to have a look for an Australian reseller. What is your setup? As I am sure you can gather I don't exactly have a studio setup but am interested in getting one together (later rather than sooner given the cost). Thus I am always on the look out for good names to put away for the time I fork out my hard earned cash. Thanks for the info. I was aware of most of your points but it's nice to see *some* pro audio people don't ignore you simply cause you have a soundcard worth less than your house. BTW: What kind of music do you produce? I would love to get to know some music producers for advice in future purchases. Thanks, Tom. > hello tom, > one thing you should realize about the sound blaster or any other > generic sound card, is: it is only a generic sound card...if you want > to do some real production, get a real sound card... > now i know this sounds pretentious, but youre ears know the difference. I wholeheartedly agree the SB Live is nothing but a toy in the world of digital audio. I also agree that *your* ears notice the difference, I'm not so sure *my* ears would notice the difference (to any degree other than "Yes, those sounds are slightly different") but give em time. May I just say the main reason I bought a SB Live is that it uses the EMU101K DSP chip and thus runs under Emu APS drivers (without analog I/O unless you mod it) and thus has ASIO drivers with 7ms latency and does all the hardware effects an APS does in Cubase (which IMHO ain't bad for about 1/5th of the price of an APS). Also, using the APS drivers means the AC97 codec is not used and thus the quality should increase (I know it aion't gonna exactly get to APS/Pulsar quality but the money in my pocket helps relieve that pain). I also live in Australia which means SB products cost about 25% more than in the US (taking into account currency of course) and any professional audio product costs 50-100% more than it should. > now in the pro-audio world we have 24-bit, 96khz commonly, and in the > extreme high end we have 32-bit, upwards of 376 khz! some SSL sound > boards cost a million dollars in change! I've always wondered what you use to transmit such quality of audio. I know qualities >24/96 are used internally in many products but these rates are usually brought down to 24/96 or even 24/48 as soon as they leave the device. Out of interest what format accomodates >24/96 and what products accept it? > now, im not saying you should spend that much money on gear Good. > youre talking about killing say 100 hours on a project that may not be > what youve expected? > well, you should have simply bought a better card. Well, this project would not simply be for a SB Live. I have done a fair ammount of investigation into low end professional multitrack cards (i.e. Gina, Layla, Darla, APS etc.). Most of these souncards do not have every format of output and if they do generally only in smaller numbers. There are cards that have all the different formats (like the Pulsar) but they cost alot more (for good reason usually). My idea would be to create a device with a multitude of various input and output formats. For example it would have analog input (RCA, 6.5mm, XLR), digital input (AES/BEU, SPDIF (RCA and TOSLink) and analog and digital out (same connectors). Thus you could basically plug any 2 devices together no matter what format. It wouldn't be so much a tool used in production but a test tool to allow maximum versatility with minumum cost. Thus you could plug any device into your system and use it. > creamware (im not affiliated with them) makes a damn fine card for > the PC, it cost around $1400 bills and has 20 in, 20 outs, (2 fiber > pipes in, 2 fiber pipes out) 24-bit, at 96 khz...it utilizes the ADSP > 21065 32-bit SHARC dsp chips from analog devices...and has connector to > link up to a dsp farm containing 20 more SHARCs...giving you 376 khz of > bandwidth! I gather you mean the Pulsar. That is a damn fine card (Only 20 bit ADC tho:( That ain't good enough (HeHe), guess they expect you to have an external ADC as well.) At the moment I'm just getting started with Pro Audio. I have an MC-303 (It's to the TB-303 what the SBLive is to the APS in my opinion) and a Yamaha DX-7 and that's it. Of course neither of these have Digital out. I didn't buy the SBLive as a Multitrack card (which of course it isn't. Hell, it's barely a soundcard), I bought it as a soundcard and for it's price it ain't a bad soundcard (especially with APS drivers). As I said before, I have nothing with Digital out hence a multitrack card ain't on top of my list of priorities. However I wouldn't mind having a Digital I/O for occasional use. For instance I have friends with DATs and I have a CD burner. It'd be nice to be able to copy DAT to CD (or WAV) for my own use and vice versa for my friends use. This is of course about the limit of the SB Live. At least if I use 48kHz it won't resample (It'll resample everything else tho inc. 44.1kHz). I was seriously considering getting a multitrack card but the price drove me away. I know I will need one for production but I'm not producing at the moment so 24/96 audio ain't a priority. When I've got another synth or two and am starting to think about recording semiprofessionally then I will need a Multitrack audio card. Until then I'll make do with my SBLive. > i was interested in the thread about spdif and converting it into > another format...but again, what for? if you have a TASCAM dat (for > example) and it use one format, why not buy the right sound card or DSP > farm to record to it? Yes, if *you* have a TASCAM DAT you go out and buy a professional converter/soundcard for it. But, if your friend has a TASCAM DAT it'd be nice to be able to plug it into your setup for a day without having to buy another soundcard. > i think in the long run, youll be happier with the attempted recording I don't doubt you'll be happier, you'll also be down about another $1000.