Recommend a soundcard for mainly video work?

Hi,

Firstly, sorry if this is supposed to go in the Hardware and SoundCards forum, but since it's specific to AA2 I thought I'd post it here.

Can someone help suggest a sound card for me please?  I'm looking at either the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 or Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum -- or something in that price range.

I mainly do video editing work in Premiere Pro but I use Audition to remove noise, normalise levels, and for basic mixing.  I'd like to be able to create 5.1 surround sound tracks, and I also need a decent mic input for voice-over work.

Right now, I have -- please don't laugh -- a C-Media onboard audio chip on my motherboard.  I'm after a card that can take audio-processing load off my CPU, handle my requirements above, and meet AA2's recommended requirements (ASIO and DirectSound drivers, as I understand it).

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Neil

Welcome to the forum.

Firstly, I'm not sure about the 5.1 requirement - this isn't straightforward at all, by all accounts.

Secondly, don't buy any sort of Soundblaster, whatever you do. Anything badged Creative is going to be a source of misery (there's loads of stuff here and on the Adobe forum about why this is - I'm not reiterating it all again!). The only part of Creative's empire that produces quality product is E-Mu, and their stuff is very good - it doesn't say Creative on it anywhere, but in fact they are E-Mu's parent company.

Thirdly, you won't find an internal sound card with a decent mic input - nobody makes them at all. Really. There are no exceptions to this anywhere. What you need is either an external converter (Firewire preferrably, or at a pinch USB2), in which they are quite common, or an internal soundcard with a breakout box containing a proper mic preamp - of which there aren't so many now.

M-Audio 2496 cards have performed well for years, and represent good value for money. So do Echo Mias. And for basic work, either of these would serve you well, as would an E-Mu 0404, I think. But as I said, the 5.1 requirement may be a problem, simply because of monitoring the output - this is where the problems seem to lie. Perhaps somebody with some experience of this can help out a little here - let's see...

Thanks for your reply and advice, Steve.  I'll stick clear of the Creative stuff!

Do the cards you mentioned support output to 5.1 speakers? When I was investigating the Audiophile 2496 I also noticed the Revolution 5.1 from M-Audio. The Revolution 5.1 specifically states it supports 5.1 surround whereas the Audiophile 2496 doesn't...  is that because it doesn't?

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that Audition has difficulties monitoring the 5.1 output? From this Adobe article, it appears that you can monitor the 5.1 tracks in Premiere:

To properly monitor 5.1 surround audio, your computer must have audio hardware that fully complies with the ASIO (Audio Stream Input/Output) specification, that's connected to a complete set of 5.1 surround speakers, and that's capable of 6-channel output. If your audio hardware doesn't meet these requirements, Adobe Premiere Pro must downmix the 5.1 channels to the two channels in your stereo speakers or headphones, and you won't hear surround sound properly.

It goes on to mention how to create & mix 5.1 tracks using Premiere, but I imagined that Audition would provide more features for doing so.

Out of interest, why do internal soundcards not have decent mic inputs? Is it about the quality of the connector?

Thanks,
Neil

Do the cards you mentioned support output to 5.1 speakers? When I was investigating the Audiophile 2496 I also noticed the Revolution 5.1 from M-Audio. The Revolution 5.1 specifically states it supports 5.1 surround whereas the Audiophile 2496 doesn't...  is that because it doesn't?

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that Audition has difficulties monitoring the 5.1 output? From this Adobe article, it appears that you can monitor the 5.1 tracks in Premiere:

I'm not at all sure that the 24/96 has enough outputs for surround at all. The only one sort-of accessible to me is currently several hundred miles away, so it's going to be a bit of a problem checking. But I suspect that you are right - if they do card specifically for surround, there's a reason. Doesn't neccessarily mean it will work with Audition though - we'd need confirmation...

Generally, it's soundcards and their drivers that appear to have the problems, not Audition. That's what they've slightly glossed over in the following:

To properly monitor 5.1 surround audio, your computer must have audio hardware that fully complies with the ASIO (Audio Stream Input/Output) specification, that's connected to a complete set of 5.1 surround speakers, and that's capable of 6-channel output. If your audio hardware doesn't meet these requirements, Adobe Premiere Pro must downmix the 5.1 channels to the two channels in your stereo speakers or headphones, and you won't hear surround sound properly.

You need two things - a card with enough discrete outputs, and a driver that's capable of coping with the feed - and despite being quite a simple requirement, it frequently appears not to work, according to several posters here and on the Adobe forums. What I'm hoping is that somebody who's succeeded in getting this to work cheaply will say what they used to do it.

It goes on to mention how to create & mix 5.1 tracks using Premiere, but I imagined that Audition would provide more features for doing so.

The surround mixer lets you pan sounds around, but it's only really set up for 5.1 surround, which isn't what everybody wants or needs. And there's no encoding - the output is either a 6-channel interleaved wav file, or six separate wav files. That part isn't particularly a problem - it's previewing the result, as mentioned above, that causes all the difficulties. I've never got it to work here at all, although I have two more potential systems I haven't tried it on, admittedly.

Out of interest, why do internal soundcards not have decent mic inputs? Is it about the quality of the connector?

Nothing to do with connector quality at all - the connector makes no discernable difference to the sound. Mic preamps have to cope with very small input levels, and to do this the electrical environment they are in has to be screened well, otherwise you get a considerable rise in background noise, due in this case to being inside an electrically hostile environment called your PC. What this means in practice is that you lose all of the lower-level information from the mic. Since the cure for this on a soundcard would be expensive, no manufacturers bother to make them. Their argument being that if anybody wants to do this properly, they will provide an external preamp dedicated to the job, and connect the higher level output of this to the rather less sensitive Line input - which works fine. What they provide instead is what most people actually want from a mic input - a means of connecting a mic for internet telephony, etc, and only in mono. This is relatively easy to implement, but the quality is absolutely dire. But it's cheap to do this, which is all that really concerns them.

Thanks for your answers and help.  I think I'm at a stage where I'm learning some of the terms and technology, without fully understanding how it all works!

I'm not at all sure that the 24/96 has enough outputs for surround at all.

The product page says that it has S/PDIF coax out, and the "digital I/O supports surround-encoded AC-3 and DTS pass-through".  Will that do the trick?

Or does that mean it can only play the surround channels once they've been encoded, e.g. it'll correctly play a DVD but it wouldn't let me play one channel from Audition and listen to it on the appropriate speaker?

If that's the case, would a card with 6 analogue outputs be better?

One of the machines here has an m-audio 24/96, and it works fine as a straightforward 2-channel analogue recording card.  I've always assumed that the sp/dif output could transmit some sort of 5.1 audio to an external decoder/amp/converter, but I know nothing about the process. If anyone wants me to poke at it and make a few guesses, I'd be happy to try, but I'm only set up for stereo.

It might be worth thinking of a good cheap proper card like the m-audio alongside a reasonable 'domestic' card. If I were to try 5.1 here, I'd start by seeing what I could do with the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz that's sitting in an older machine, which could, I think, produce enough analogue outputs.

Isn't Music Conductor our expert on this here?

Thanks for the reply, Wildduck.  If possible, I'd prefer one card instead of two, hopefully since one would be cheaper than getting two , but also to keep things simple.  But, if two cards are the only way to go, then I guess I'll have to look into it!

I've been looking into the M-Audio Delta 1010LT.  The product page states that it can output up to 7.1.  Adobe says it's "fully supported" for Premiere Pro, and from what I can tell, it also has the necessary drivers for Audition's requirements.  Maybe that'll do everything I need it to?