PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production Saffire PRO 24

Okay Nic,
I don't have any experience with the Saffire, and Scott probably has a better concept about the mixer applet than I do, but here goes the basic stuff.

The terms 'Audio Interface', 'Sound card' and such have lost a lot of their original meaning, and it's very confusing to people.

Let's go over a couple of things, okay?

An 'Audio Interface' is a device that is designed to get audio in and out of your computer. On the Input side, it can be from microphones, or Direct Input boxes, or guitar processors like the Line 6 Pods. On the output side, it takes the information on the computer, and sends to to headphones, speakers, and outboard effects processors.

For the most part, 'Audio Interfaces' DO NOT create sounds, like instruments! I can not emphasize this enough.

Creating the instruments sounds is the job of a synthesizers. More detail in a second or two.

Sound cards, at least in the dark ages of beginning PC, were a combination of Audio Interface and Synthesizer. They not only put the sound into the computer, as well as took it out of the computer, but for 'MIDI' information, created the actual sounds from an onboard stored library. Later on, Creative Labs brought out something called 'SoundFonts,' which allowed the actual sound library to be stored on the hard drive.

For the most part, those days are gone. The sound chips in most computers today are really nothing more than an audio interface, and in Windows, there is a software synthesizer that uses basically the same technology as Creative Labs Soundfonts.

So, along the way these 'software synthesizers' came along, and some of them aren't too bad, some are pretty crappy, and some are amazing. But, as with anything, you get what you pay for.

You said This is an indication of the confusion that is so prevalent. You don't want a good quality outboard sound card, you want a good quality sound generator, i.e., a good synthesizer. You want the best sounding sounds you can get.

Two ways to go about this. For Karaoke, my feeling is that a high quality external sound module, like the Roland SD50 that PG Music sells, would be idea.

http://www.pgmusic.com/rolandsd50.win.htm

This will allow you to plug in the MIDI output from the computer and select the SD-50 as the MIDI output device in Band In A Box. The SD-50 will also allow you to use it as an Audio Interface for getting RealTracks out of the computer and to your speakers. I don't have one, but I would assume that you can mix both Audio Tracks, i.e., Real Tracks and MIDI Tracks together. It also has a Mic input, so your Karaoke singers should be able to sing along with you.

To give you an idea of what is possible, here are some sample sounds from the SD50

http://www.rolandus.com/flash/demos/sd50/sound.swf

There are also reviews of the SD50 on this very website, so you can do a search for them.

I truly believe you're looking for an audio sound generator, with an Audio Interface, and the SD50 gives you that, versus an Audio Interface with no sound generator.

EDIT: Okay, what I've done is this. I created a Melodist song in Band In A Box. Currently, I use a Korg PA800 arranger keyboard, retail right now about $2,500 USD This is 32 bars.

Korg Test.

If you buy Roland hardware, or sometimes, Cakewalk software, you'll get the TTS-1 software synth. Same song, same 32 bars.

TTS-1 Test

Finally, several people really like the Coyote Forte DXi. I'm not one of them, but here it is anyway.

The Forte Test.

All of these songs use the same Real Drums, all the other instruments are synthesized. In fairness, I had to adjust the TTS-1 volumes a little bit to get it to sound more balanced, but that was the only thing I did.

Gary