Sound card recommendations?

[Gustin Johnson]

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The answer really depends on your needs and budget.  I have an RME 9652
that is simply awesome, particularly under Linux.  A more budget
solution is the M-Audio  Deltas which for the price are really good.
For now stay away from firewire.  You can make some of the devices work,
check out the list at ffado
(http://minicomputer.sourceforge.net/minicomputer3.ogg), but there are
better choices out there.

Older Creative cards have varying degrees of support.  You may wish to
check out an early Audigy (there are still lots to be found on ebay).
This is likely the only way you will get a synth on the sound card
itself, most other sound devices don't actually have a real synth, as it
is done in software by the driver under windows.  This should not be a
deal breaker since there are some excellent software synths under linux.
~ Qsynth can make use of your existing sound fonts for example.

You may wish to check out the alsa project for ideas on sound cards:
http://alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Main

I don't use Windows but I would be surprised if a device worked under
Linux and not Windows.

I also do not use 5.1, so you may wish to check the alsa support forums
as this is often not supported.

Some applications you may be interested in:
gimp
inkscape
rosegarden
seq24
qsynth
qsampler
bristol (I would build this from source)

There are a ton of gems other than those I listed.

Hth,

kwatson6 at austin.rr.com wrote:
| Glad I stumbled upon Ubuntu Studio.  I've been through a terrible
| time trying to get sound working with Linux Mint and Ubuntu 8.04.
| Unfortunately, my Creative SB X-Fi card doesn't support Linux.  I've
| decided to replace the sound card, and am hoping someone on this list
| can make a recommendation.
|
| I plan to install Ubuntu Studio when I get time this weekend, and
| work from that distribution.  I write and arrange music (currently
| using Sibelius on WinXP), and edit digital photography with Photoshop
| CS.  Looking forward to the linux environment.
|
| I need the card to work with both Ubuntu and WinXP Media Center
| Edition, with these general requirements: - 5.1 speaker capability -
| front mic/line input - front headphone output - front MIDI ports
| desirable (I have an adapter that works through USB in Windows) - 100
| Hz S/N - 20-20kHz freq range - decent onboard synth
|
| Thanks!
|
| Details: - Dell XPS 400 w/Intel Pentium D 2.80 GHz chip - 4GB RAM - 2
| HDD (sda 160 GB, Windows; dual boot with sdb 500 GB, Linux) - EVGA
| GeForce 8800 GT video card
|
|
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