beginner: what difference does a sound card make?

[synnack]

Outside of sound quality, latency varies from soundcard to soundcard depending on driver. If you play a lot via USB controllers you'll want a better audio interface purely for better (lower) latency.

[hacktheplanet]

You say you are a beginner, so I will impart upon you wisdom I wish I had when I was first beginning:
NEVER EVER BUY M-AUDIO INTERFACES

why not?

Like Nux said, the drivers mostly. The sound quality is kinda shitty (depends on the unit), but it's hard to complain at that price pont. The drivers however, oh boy the drivers. I had a FW1814 a while back that every so often would lose connection with the computer. To get it working again I had to reinstall the software.

I will say that I haven't experienced any issues with their MIDI gear though.

[synnack]

You say you are a beginner, so I will impart upon you wisdom I wish I had when I was first beginning:
NEVER EVER BUY M-AUDIO INTERFACES

why not?

Like Nux said, the drivers mostly. The sound quality is kinda shitty (depends on the unit), but it's hard to complain at that price pont. The drivers however, oh boy the drivers. I had a FW1814 a while back that every so often would lose connection with the computer. To get it working again I had to reinstall the software.

I will say that I haven't experienced any issues with their MIDI gear though.

There have been many complaints here that they lag OS support. So when Windows 7 came out (for example) a lot of people couldn't upgrade for a while because M-Audio took forever to update the drivers to work with it.

[grooverb]

It'll make tons of difference. I was using the PC sound card when I started out and every upgrade I've done has made a difference to the quality of sound and what I can do. The upgrading went:-

M-Audio Oxygen 2
EMU-1616
Yamaha HS50s
Yamaha HS80s
Apogee Duet/Macbook Pro
Novation Impulse

I kid you not, my set up sounds kin awesome! My mum described it as putting your glasses on. You can actually hear how much reverb and delay etc has been put on a track clearly, and I didn't hear it on stuff before.

For starting out, do your research. Heard lots of stuff about focusrite being good AI, but you also need good monitors, and you need to get your room set up as best you can as well.

You could spend a stupid amount of cash, but get the best you can for as little money as you can at the moment. You can always sell stuff on and get new gear as you go along.

My next buy is looking like its going to be an iPad and an mpk mini at least, but I've been going for about 5 years, I've saved for everything, not used credit at all, done research to make what looks like the best purchase and taken it from there.

As for M-Audio, yeah had trouble myself. My Oxygen controller packed up, and I'd hardly used it, but it was out of warranty and it took way too much mucking about to find a guy who does all the repairs and stuff for M-Audio. Once I spoke to him, everything was easy, but I don't know if any of the other manufacturers are really any better, apart from Apogee. I contacted them before I bought the duet with a few questions and they were really helpful.

Before I forget. Don't buy something and then keep buying more, especially with software. You're better off focusing on one synth/bundle for example than keep buying stuff and going through the presets and then buying more. You'll get nowhere expensively. A little bit of restriction can be very good for you.
Best of luck with it

[abl385]

Like Nux said, the drivers mostly. The sound quality is kinda shitty (depends on the unit), but it's hard to complain at that price pont. The drivers however, oh boy the drivers. I had a FW1814 a while back that every so often would lose connection with the computer. To get it working again I had to reinstall the software.

I will say that I haven't experienced any issues with their MIDI gear though.

There have been many complaints here that they lag OS support. So when Windows 7 came out (for example) a lot of people couldn't upgrade for a while because M-Audio took forever to update the drivers to work with it.

Fair enough. Although I haven't got any problems with my M-Audio interface so far.

[pepezabala]

honestly I believe that the macbook's built in soundcard is probably better than anything m-audio in the lower price section. so I would recommend to the OP to buy decent monitors first. He is not recording anything, doesn't need midi input, so an external soundcard is just not necessary.

[gjm]

honestly I believe that the macbook's built in soundcard is probably better than anything m-audio in the lower price section. so I would recommend to the OP to buy decent monitors first. He is not recording anything, doesn't need midi input, so an external soundcard is just not necessary.

This. ^^