Ableton Forum

Hello,

O learned ones.

I am currently upgrading my Ableton experience from a laptop to desktop and I would like to get some recommendations for the top External sound cards for use with Ableton?

Ideally I suppose I need something with top sound quality, a headphone jack for mixing with Ableton and a few effects (not really that importnat)

So far I seem to keep hearing alot about the M Audio equipment.

Any feedback would be great.

Thanks,
C

M-AUDIO are not that good.Many people here have problems.
Perhaps you sould look for a Presonus or RME but they cost a lot of money.
How much money you want to spent?

crashkane wrote: So far I seem to keep hearing alot about the M Audio equipment.

Well here's one then:
They're cheap and nasty, the sound of the pres are awful. The drivers are often written in the dark by monkeys.

But they're cheap..

How much do you have to spend?
If money is tight, rob your Gran and buy RME.

You can't go wrong with an MOTU Ultralite.

im open to spending a decent amount of money - £150 - £200Max

to get the right set up from the get go and not need to upgrade later.

Also is USB or firewire a better option of connection? and if firewire which type?

Thanks

nice and cheap: http://www.echoaudio.com/ ... Take the http://www.echoaudio.com/Products/FireW ... /index.php if you don't have too much money. I like my audiofire4 alot. Good Sound lots of features ...

Karimbou wrote:nice and cheap: http://www.echoaudio.com/ ... Take the http://www.echoaudio.com/Products/FireW ... /index.php if you don't have too much money. I like my audiofire4 alot. Good Sound lots of features ...

What latency do you get with the AudioFire? With what system? OS, CPU, RAM etc.

Thanks
/Jonas

no offense, but that's not a decent amount of money, as far as decent sound cards go. emu 1616m may be just out of your range, but it's good, and has fx.

crashkane wrote:im open to spending a decent amount of money - £150 - £200Max

That's very much in the low range for soundcards. If you don't need to record audio or use more than one output, you could potentially be more happy with the built-in audio, especially if you have a Mac, than with anything you can get for 200 quid. It really depends on your needs.

What kind of computer do you have? Desktop? Laptop? Do you have firewire ports? USB 2.0? PCMCIA?

If you're after a value for money card (USB) I'd recommend:

U46DJ, or
U46DJSE

I paid £30 for mine at Thomann.com, and they're great for the money. You may have to experiment with the drivers, though, and maybe even dodge the supplied drivers and use ASIO4ALL.

Great for the money...

P.S - Buy an UltraLite.

Patch wrote:You can't go wrong with an MOTU Ultralite.

Well, I was considering that till I read that a fair amount of folks were having some issues with them. I went with an older M-Audio (new when I bought it a few yrs ago) Omni Studio breakout box with Delta66 card and I plug my M-Audio BX8a's into the breakout box for my new PC via 1/4" connections and using 1/8" stereo to XLR to 2nd inputs on monitors. Works nicely between the two PC's (dual inputs on the monitors). I have been fairly happy with the M-Audio gear I have. No major problems in ~3yrs. The Monitors I got some time late last year or early this year.

It sounds like you're looking for an Echo Audiofire2. It's cheap, it connects via firewire, and is immediately recognized within Ableton.

But it only has 2 ins, 2 outs, and a headphone jack. If you're looking to connect more than I or two external instruments, effects processors, monitors, etc. you're gonna have to dig a little deeper into those pockets, boss.

crashkane wrote:im open to spending a decent amount of money - £150 - £200Max

to get the right set up from the get go and not need to upgrade later.

Also is USB or firewire a better option of connection? and if firewire which type?

Thanks

USB is more than enough for a 2in/2 out soundcard.
USB2 soundcards and firewire are probably pretty similar in power... BUT USB 2.0 is way more common on computers these days than firewire.

I think m-audio gets the most complaints in part because they are cheap and have issues, but also because they are the most prevalent. Just like you are most likely to be involved in a car wreck within a few km of your house. I had an maudio 2496 for years and it was totally adequate.

Still, one day I needed to upgrade... i needed good preamps and more inputs.... I'm sure you'll need to upgrade some day, too.

Look into the Edirol UA25 as well as the echo.

I just picked up an Alesis IO14 and it's great on my laptop PC, even though it only has a 4 pin mini firewire (like 99% of PC laptops) meaning the interface has to be powered by it's AC adapter and no buss powering available. And sometimes 4 pin mini FW interfaces can be a problem.

However - My computer has a Texas Instruments firewire chipset - the majority do not, they have cheaper ENE and Ricoh chipsets which are a bit erratic for firewire audio interfaces. TI chipsets are much better. And a 6 pin to 4 pin firewire cable was not included and therefore I had to spend another 30 dollars on a cable.

Make sure you upgrade to the most recent drivers on the website, as the drivers that come with the card are about 3.5-4ms slower on latency. The performance of the latest driver is really good, latency is really good. The preamps are really good for this price and it has an insert jack that allows you to connect better preamps or external fx. It has 4 analog in and 2 out, with 8 ADAT channels available by lightpipe if you have ADAT or an ADAT preamp.

http://www.alesis.com/product.php?id=95