buy a sound card

[laurent.bellegarde]

Karlheinz Noise a écrit :
> > what's the main difference between a first price sound card and a
> > professionnal one ?
>
> An amateur sound card needs a stereo in/out, for converting tapes and 
> LP's, gaming, and the usual computer stuff. You can record with these, 
> but the DAC's are usually not so good (though better than even 5 years 
> ago). You do not need to have more than 16bit/44.1KHz for these 
> (though if you do, good for you).
>
> Medium soundcards are for non-pro musicians and home studio users. 
> These will probably need MIDI, and AT LEAST 24bit/96KHz stereo. Most 
> likely there will need to be 4, 8, or 16 discreet channels to hook up 
> to your mixer. This is where the majority of Linux users are.
>
> Professional sound cards should be 24bit/192KHz, with oversampling 
> DAC's, minimum 8 channels I/O, and ideally include a mixer (motorized 
> faders are nice). The computers that run these cards should NEVER be 
> connected to the internet, and should have no software on the machine 
> other than what is needed to run specific music apps. In other words, 
> it would be a package system. Historically, ProTools is the model for 
> this sort of system, but others have been tried (e.g. PARIS, MOTU).
[cut][/cut]
>
> -Karlheinz

hi,

many thanks to this complete answer. I'have started the same discussion 
with an home studio amateur owner in France, and a professionnal studio 
running under GNU/Linux in France too.

for them,

integrated soundcard, terractec aureon 5.1 usb2 or terractec 5.1 pci are 
good enough for beginners.

if you want to make music,

beginner : M-audio series, some edirol series
medium : M-audio, Presonus, some cheaper RME
Professionnal : RME, foccusfire saphir

It seems to be close to your answer.

Many Thanks,

Laurent