It's more a matter of how much content can your sound card handle. Cheaper sound cards are usually only made to stream a few things at once and not usually used to render out multiple audio tracks (or sources) into one master track. You can start to get audio pops, clicks and drop outs with less powerful audio cards.

The better the sound card, the more... "buffer" you have when bouncing four audio tracks and three VST tracks down into one master. The really high end cards have chips on the sound cards and plugins that can utilize those chips to do all DSP instead of your CPU which helps keep everything running nice and smooth. Also higher end sound cards usually have higher sampling rates to offer.

I actually wrote to the original thread author regarding that comment.

My opinion is that very(!) little is down to what sound card you have providing that you are using software-only approach.

I have a Creamware Pulsar II DSP card that I once paid over £1200 for and that is collecting dust in my drawer now, partially because it is outdated but mainly because I don't need it anymore.

I'm using the onboard motherboard soundcard now in Windows 7 (the pulsar II has no drivers) and I use the ASIO4ALL drivers with it in Cubase 5 x64. It works really well and my computer is doing all the mixing totally (lossless of course) internally so the sound card has no effect at all here.

If you use external hardware still you'll need a sound card with multiple inputs - but it feels like an ancient approach nowadays :)

Quote:Original post by facher83
I'm just curious... but how does a $500 sound card going to improve the quality of a Cubase project than the next $50 sound card.

in no way

Quote:Original post by facher83
How might the $500 sound card improve the midi signal from your $5,000 keyboard when the same data signal can come from a $100 keyboard on a $50 sound card?

in no way, but try to record MIDI from $100 keyboard on a $50 sound card and then from $5000 keyboard on a $500 sound card and you will see... or hear :) Cheaper keyboards feel bad to play and in combination with cheap soundcard you will usually get quite big latency from your keyboard to your speakers caused by keyboard and soundcard.

Quote:Original post by facher83
I'm really lost with this... if your sample libraries are on the hard drive, the DSP occurs from your DAW/Sequencer, and the raw power comes from your CPU and computer - - how does having $10,000 worth of sound cards and keyboards honestly improve the sound QUALITY that your Intel CPU can spit out onto a wave file?

How? simply ask what does sample libraries (which you can compare with $10,000 keyboards) cost... good sample libraries aren't usually for free. There is another point you should think about. Many samplers, synthesizers or romplers or anyhow you name keyboard instruments use much smaller sample libraries with better results than a software instruments used with computer. It is because of very efficient memory usage, patented and somehow original DSP and because everything in these instruments is optimalized for making sound and music. Instruments can do nothing but a music. Computers are universal machines, that can "do anything". Try to think about " $5,000 Korg" as a sword and computer as a Swiss-knife.

Quote:Original post by facher83
I have a hard time reading the rest of the article when this idea of 5-digit hardware that doesn't directly effect a sample library is somehow a NEED to write better music.

I agree with you here, of course you can write good music with any instrument, sample library, sequencer or whatever.

Quote:Original post by facher83
By that logic, I would be required to have a MIDI keyboard, when in fact I do not use one - so how would a $30 Casio keyboard with MIDI out be any different for me than a $5,000 Korg keyboard? It wouldn't - because I don't even use MIDI.

Actually, you do use MIDI, although you don't realize it. If you really write music, you have to use notation or piano-roll or any other sequencer window to insert notes. :) If you didn't ever play the keyboard and you don't need it to write music, than you are right - there's no difference between any keyboards for you. But many musicians like to make music by recording their ideas when they play "real" instruments. If anybody plays keyboard, he knows what are differences between $30 Casio keyboard and $5,000 Korg keyboard.

Quote:Original post by Imphenzia
If you use external hardware still you'll need a sound card with multiple inputs - but it feels like an ancient approach nowadays :)

Well, are singers, guitarists, trumpetists, piano players, harpers and others an "ancient approach" too? Possibly not... :D



At last, sorry for my poor english, I do what I am able to.

[Edited by - lesny_troll on March 30, 2010 4:39:07 PM]

Imho the sound card is not that important. OK, you need one with low latency if you want to record something, but thanks to ASIO4all this is often not a problem. It's way more important to gain knowledge and experience. If i took a good music producer and gave my notebook (with onboard sound and some sequencer on) to him I am quite sure that what he could produce using this equipment would sound *way* better than anything I could produce, even on a big ProTools system.