Soundcard choice advice needed

[smilejack1]

A friend just gave me a Dell Dimension 2400. It's old, but my current machine is much older. According to the Dell website, it has an Analog Devices 198x Integrated Audio sound processor, which I can't find much info about online. I also happen to have an old Creative Soundblaster Live card (the Dell OEM version) I could put in this machine. I'm not all that knowledgeable about such things, and I'm wondering which would be better from the following two perspectives:

1) Managing general sound tasks (like system sounds and YouTube videos and the like) while reducing the demands on general system resources. Doesn't the Soundblaster have it's own chip and memory, thereby freeing up the main processor and memory for other tasks?

2) Handling more demanding sound tasks like recording and audio mixing in Audacity and Band-in-a-Box. I don't do complicated recordings (I just record a few guitar and vocal tracks a track at a time). But I also record on a friend's digital recording studio and bring the tracks home to mix. I need reasonably good sound quality on these.

All help is greatly appreciated.

[ripken204]

the sound blaster is most likely better than that onboard, especially for the age of that computer.

do you know which sound blaster live it is exactly?

use the sound blaster will help the system resources a bit if that is your main concern.

if you want to record guitar/vocals and actually care about the quality then i would suggest a better card though.

if you don't care too much about the quality then it won't matter much.

also, this computer may have issues running some programs if you plan on doing any sort of production work.

[smilejack1]

The part # is CT5807. According to the info here it's the Sound Blaster Audio Pci 64 Dell OEM.

The sound quality on the tracks I record on my computer doesn't really matter - those are just studies. What I record elsewhere and mix on my computer needs to sound good. I'm guessing that the soundcard won't alter the quality of those tracks at all, however, as long as the playback is good enuogh that I can mix them competently.

Thanks for the advice...

[CoffeeFiend]

1) Managing general sound tasks (like system sounds and YouTube videos and the like) while reducing the demands on general system resources. Doesn't the Soundblaster have it's own chip and memory, thereby freeing up the main processor and memory for other tasks?

It won't be of any help for avi files and youtube and that kind of thing, as the mp3 sound (or similar codecs) will be decoded by your CPU anyway.

2) Handling more demanding sound tasks like recording and audio mixing in Audacity and Band-in-a-Box.

AFAIK all that stuff is also done in software, so no help there either.

Although the SB Live will have better sound quality for sure, over an old low-end stereo-only AC97 codec.

Edit: Well, if it's not even a Live series card (Ensoniq ES1373 based)... It'll likely have a slight edge over the onboard codec, but not by much.

But seriously, even this $8 card has better audio than both (that's the absolute cheapest card I've ever seen). Or for $11 you can have 8 channel 96/24 playback, with support for recent codecs (DD EX/DTS ES ) and more.

[smilejack1]

Unfortunately, I've recently become unemployed, so I can't justify even $8 if it's not absolutely necessary. The rest of your advice, however, is very useful and I appreciate it greatly...

[Sysdll]

I’d go with the old creative card. Xp should install the drivers. There could be a problem with recording though. Older cards have latency problems and there could be a slight delay on the recordings you make with this card. And the DA, AD converters are going to sound thin.

Try to record everything on your friends system.

I use multiple setups for mixing and mastering. Huge speakers, tiny old car radio speakers and anything in between I can find. The trick is it to get the mix to sound good on any system not just on a state of art studio system.

The old SBs have a ghetto blaster warmth when cranked; just make sure it’s not the only thing you use.

I’ve seen used pro quality ISA sound cards for under $5.00 if you have those slots.

Edited August 4, 2009 by Sysdll