Hi, I was wondering about the Sound card factoring in to our BiaB mixes. What if a person just has the Onboard Realtek sound. Just the basic motherboard sound when they are working with BiaB and trying to Mix their music. Would I for some reason have a better product with buying a 50 dollar sound card?

I found this:
Refurbished Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCIe Sound Card for 39.99 refurbished. Would something like that help? I think you all will say no, not at all. That doesn't factor in. But that is just my low-tech assumption.

Not sure of your OS, and/or your PC, but with my retired Vista system HP, the realtek was not very good to use. I did as your considering put a Soundblaster card on board. So much better. It was a one of their
better cards, but not Titanium. If your PC will handle it that's the
direction IMHO to go.

If you are not Recording, but just using it to Playback, most modern PC built in sound devices have fairly good to excellent Playback capability specs these days. That is because of the huge customer base interest in playing of Audio and Video files on the PC.

Your ears should be your guide here.

When using the onboard sound device, make sure that you visit the Control Panel via the Speaker icon and turn the faders for the right outputs and masters UP to drive your amplified speakers with full audio. Adjust volume levels inside the host software in use at the time. This one thing leads many to believe that the onboard sound devices sound bad. But the reality is that the audio will indeed sound rather "thin" if those key Playback faders are not turned up to at least abiout 75% of full travel. In many cases, I turn the all the way up - and adjust overall volume at the speaker amplifier itself, using the hardware volume.


--Mac

Not sure what IMHO I am trying to Google it lol. So with a new higher quality sound card going into the PCI slot. Maybe they make pciExpress. I will have to check. But the sound card doesn't just affect the playback right? Will it give us a better DAW product? Higher fidelity? Or having a better sound card won't affect that? I don't want to consider a 100 dollar card if it doesn't do anything for my recording and just improves my listening pleasure.

At least I don't want to do that right now. I have some things to pay off. I just spent about 1,400 on BiaB Audiophile, 3 iZotope Plugins, Roland QuadCapture Interface, Casio WK-3000 Keyboard. Yes the keyboard sounds like an embarassement. Casio sounds like a child's toy. But it got high reviews and it is used in mind condition and won it for 140.00 delivered cost. So it will be something to give me something to play with some midi with at the very least. though I sold some things and selling more on Ebay I am down to about a 600 dollar debt soon. 400 dollars in a couple days. So I was lucky to sell an old broken Lexus for 350 also. I hope it all was a good investment and I bought the right things this time. For example my iZotope Studio plugins. I hope they truly do some masterful things beyond stock plugins. They cost me a whopping 399 dollars on sale. My luck RealBand could nearly do me the same with some stock plugins that could be given. I think there is something with the iZotope plugins though that could help me. Though I did experiment with them the other day and I wasn't impressed. Though I just started and didn't give it much of a chance.

Look up the specs for the motherboard at the mfr's site that made the mobo, with attention to the onboard sound device's playback specs, then compare to the aftermarket specs.


--Mac

I think we need more information on what Sly Ruby really wants or needs.

If it is just playback then yes his Realtek is fine. But if he wants to record vocals then I don’t think so. If he wants to record more than one thing at a time then I don’t think so unless he has a good mixing board.

If he wants better MIDI sounds then a new sound card will not help either.

Like I said I think we need more information before we make any recommendations.

Hey Mario, thanks for the reply. I will tell you what I am doing. I have a goal on trying to do a couple albums in 2014 and beyond. This could take me all 2014 to dial it in. Write all my songs who knows. Give me 2015 who knows lol. Then into more music projects for years to come of course. That is why I am into BiaB now. I don't have the money to actually go into a big studio and do it that way. So it is my Songwriting skill, singing talent, guitar, and hopefully keyboard playing talent that can get this going. With my BiaB helping me put it all together.

So that is what I want to produce my independent, Bossa Nova musical project with my Virtual Band called Frychester. Seen here on www.Frychester.com. The cover to my album anyway. And my Sly Ruby musical project seen here on www.SlyRuby.com. I have to start somewhere. So why not start with registering my dotcoms and putting potential album covers on my sites? Wow I am close to this being a reality now lol. Not too close. I just started writing some lyrics. Working on some chord progressions and seeing what I come up with. I should work on a song a night. Maybe after 50 song ideas I can narrow it down on some that I should focus on.

Anyway I want to produce some albums for online digital downloads for now. Not caring too much about real cd's at this time. I likely won't make but a few dollars here and there. Sell a few albums on occasion to some foreigners that like my style. Let me know what I should get for a sound card if it helps me actually produce a higher quality recording. If having a better sound card factors in please let me know how it does this. Playback with these RealTek is fine. But are you telling me we need better sound cards to produce higher quality audio productions? Let me know what is the sound card most home studio producers like if you can. I will go Google it now also.

Maybe my Roland QuadCapture Audio Interface does what I need? I just found this:
------------------------------------------------------
Sound Cards are one option for managing the input and output of audio signals in your Digital Audio Workstation.

They interpret and convert the assorted audio signals that are encountered throughout your home studio using components such as Analog to Digital Converters.

They perform the same function as you'll find in an Audio Interface.

One important note is that sound cards rarely have mic preamps, so you will likely need to take care of that with another piece of gear.
------------------------------------------------------

Sounds to me that my Audio Interface does what a sound card would be doing? So my interface I just bought will give me a nice audio production and now I won't need some a sound card involved other than some basic card since this interface does the trick??

the quad capture appears to support ASIO via the new roland VS drivers. this should give you what you need for good recording and playback. If I read the specs right for the interface you should not need an additional sound card, and you will likely not use the on board sound capabilities of the motherboard either. the quad capture should be superior.

a word of advice. you have A LOT to learn and digest. take your time, do one thing at a time.

Have fun with your new setup, I look forward to hearing your work in the coming months...

PK

Thanks Phil for the very informative reply to my post. I do have a lot to learn about all this. Yes I will try and take my time absorbing it all. I won't expect too much knowledge too fast on it all. This little bit of info helps. It all adds up. This all takes a lot of understanding. I don't know how it all works yet but it is good to know my Roland Interface has the ASIO VS DRIVERS to help me record with high quality and playback also. I didn't know this.

I am baffled how I lost my Stereo Mix though. I have had Stereo Mix for years. Lost it on occasion because of some glitch. I would have to re-install the Sound Driver. But this time is strange. Stereo Mix is there but it just won't work. The sound meter isn't moving showing any output. Yes I worked with the driver and installed it again. Nothing. I even resorted to reformatting and re-installing Windows 7. But still the same thing. No output on my Stereo Mix. This has to be a hardware failure of some kind. This has not happened to me. Let me know if you have heard of a RealTek On-Board sound failing to give output to Stereo Mix because of a hardware failure. Finally something just something blows out on it. Who knows what. Ok thought I would sneak in this Stereo Mix question since you sound very knowledgable

Thanks Sly

Late to the party..... had family in for the weekend....

In my experience, a factory sound card (reltek and others) will work fine with BB and even RB under most conditions. The problems arise when you start to mix audio tracks with midi based synth tracks.

The midi synths take longer to process and as a result you get a delay or latency in hearing the midi. Trying to record audio over the latency is a real PITA.

Buying a sound blaster, no matter how good, is generally NOT the answer since they still have issues with ASIO. In fairness to SB, I heard some time back that they do have some cards now that will work fine in recording environments.

Personally, I recommend a dedicated audio/midi interface running on native (no wrappers) ASIO drivers, and one that has nice clean preamps in it with phantom power. That gets you into the Presonus, M-Audio, Focusrite, and Roland interfaces. There are other brands, but one should always be an informed buyer and not just buy something that catches the eye for it's cool looks.

Way to often, assisting in the Sonar forums, I have seen people buy the "gizmo" style card... "it slices, it dices and it does sound too!" kind of thing. Maybe I'm just old school, but I like the plain and simple, rock solid, get the job done without the frills, audio interface.

You mentioned doing "a couple of albums" in 2014..... so I would invest in some good gear to make that job easier. If you're just doing instrumental stuff that is solely BB, you might be OK with any sound card, but to work with audio mixed with synths, and BB/RB tracks, I would opt for the better, rock solid USB musical interface.

I have yet to see the onboard Realtek sound fail in only one input like that. Typically, the entire set of available Inputs fails altogether at one time. This makes sense, actually, because the whole audio mixing thing is done on one chip.

Did you look into the Recording Properties window?

*When you double-click on the little Speaker icon in the taskbar, it first brings up only the Playback mixer.

*The Playback mixer has a menu across the top of it, to get to the Record Properties select Options->Properties, then select Record Properties with the Radio button, then follow the trail to where you actually activate Inputs by checking them to be True.


--Mac

be sure the mute isn't on by accident. I can't count the times I have rebooted, and checked cables due to no sound..... only to find out that somehow I had accidentally clicked the MUTE button my mistake and didn't realize it.

Although my favorite "duuuuuh moment" was a few months back.... no sound.... but the meters were bouncing, and the lights on the headphone amp were flashing all indicating there was signal..... but nothing in the headphones..... I cranked the volume know up to 100%....I even rebooted the entire rig..... nothing..... not even the tiniest whisper in the cans..... I took off the headphones and started to wrap up the cord.....when I realized the headphone jack was plugged into the laptop and not the headphone amp...... yeah... it happens...

One thing to remember is that if you buy a audio interface like the roland that IS your sound card, use it for everything music related, set up all software to use that "card"

I set up BiaB to use the MME drivers for the interface, and RB to use ASIO drivers, or any other DAW i work in is also ASIO. This way i can use BiaB and Rb at the same time, with drop and drag and such.

I was going to ask why are you using the Realtek card when you have the Roland but Rob beat me to the punch. In fact I have my Realtek disabled and I only use my Roland Octa-Capture. I also use the same driver setup as Rob for the identical reasons.

I also asked this question in another similar thread.

This statement today by Craig Anderton, a respected writer associated with the Cakewalk Forum (SONAR), might be relevant:

"I have a couple laptops and gave up on using the internal sound options a long time ago, they're just too unreliable. A good interface with good drivers will solve a lot of problems."

That is good information thanks. Well I like to talk about the albums. Likely shabby demo quality lol, I can only do my best. They might be laughable. I never have produced anything other than some bad demos of guitar and vocals. We will see if I can get some good vocal recordings out of this. Instead of thinking about albums how about I just think about one song at a time? That is what I will do. One shabby little song at a time and do the best I can do. This could take a couple years all I know. I will just try and enjoy working with BiaB and my new equipment.

Yes I have this Roland Quad Capture interface. So it is just what you are talking about. It should do the trick. A couple question on this ASIO set up. Resample is Fast, Good, Better, Best. What do you like to set it at? And why? And ASIO Always On..that should be checked? I have it checked. And Preload Track Buffer was set to 2000 default. If you think I should change that let me know.

Thanks,
Sly

Yes I am finally understanding that we don't use our on-board sound at all. You use the ASIO drivers and your Audio Interface. I will keep learning these things.

About always using ASIO, not necessarily. For some soundcards (some Tascam units, for example), their WDM drivers are better. Plus, if you intend to run BIAB along with another audio program (often a DAW), then sometimes there is less conflict if you let the DAW have the ASIO driver. You only need ASIO if your soundcard works best on it, and you are recording where you need to reduce latency.