A real quick one this time around in hopes that the hours I’ve spent looking around the interworld for soundcard info will help you if you are in need of some help. The short of it is that I need a new soundcard, the long of it is the options available, with none seeming 100% ideal for me yet.
I love looking up gear and researching it but after a while it’s one of those bytes in a gig situation (aka drops in a bucket people). Combine this with the ultimate in efficiency – the chart, and suddenly things become a few bytes easier. Although this chart may not be perfectly up to date, there is definitely enough info here to get a start on things. If you are in the same position as I am, may this cut out at least one afternoon of scrolling and clicking for you. Of course, comments always welcome, additional info more so.
http://www.tweakheadz.com/audio_interface_fw_comparison_chart.htm
Tags: audio technology, consumerism, Electronics
For live performance, you need to get the lowest amount of latency possible. The two most important things is the means the interface uses to connect to the computer and the drivers that run it. Expresscard interfaces should theoretically offer the best latency since its like having a PCI card, a direct route to the CPU. RME, on the other hand, programs such great drivers that their Firewire interfaces compete with other PCI sound cards even though firewire is a slower medium.
Thanks for the comment. I agree with all that for sure. And although express cards are faster, I'm still leaning to FW for it's versatility when it comes to other systems since I often have to work on others peoples set ups.
Let us also appreciate a soundcard that allows a good amount of flexibility when it comes to sending signals out. Ins are important as well but the last card I had ran 6 unique stereo outs which I got used to really fast. Seems that a lot of cards are focused either on multiple ins or outs but not really both unless you start to get into rack size boxes which are a little less than compact.
Cards that do not completely take over the comp so that you can run multiple cards at the same time are also very appealing for both performance and production. I've had this happen with Alesis and MAudio in the past and it was a very cool time (nerdly speaking) and piles of fun to have two cards running at the same time across multiple applications.