Anything by Soundblaster, or Realtek, or any of the other consumer level cards that generally come integrated as the audio card on store-bought computers, are usually not the preferred choice of those who want to work in audio production, nor are they generally of the caliber or quality needed to work with production. These are generally used for gaming, or for providing audio on internet streaming of video and audio. Because of this, they generally have very cheap ADDA converters, and will suffer from poor audio quality. They're fine for gaming or watching YouTube videos, but they aren't of the caliber and quality that is usually desired for professional audio production.

RME and Lynx are both companies that do make pro spec audio devices. I would stick with one of those...

The other option, if your computer has USB ports, would be to look at external preamp/digital capture/playback devices; you simply connect the device using a USB cable, choose it as your default device within your control panel/audio device panel, and you're good to go. The benefit to using an external device is that you can connect a microphone (or instrument, or Tape or CD player, etc.) directly to it, without the need for an external mixer and its required audio cable connections to adapt to the inputs of a PCI card. Many of these also come with Midi I/O as well, so you can also connect a midi keyboard to them to play internal VSTi samples. All of them come with 48v Phantom Power, so that you can use condenser mics as well as dynamics.

While dated ( and now discontinued) Windows XP SP2 is a pretty solid OS platform; however, it's also only 32 bit, and is limited in the amount of RAM it can access. So, if you are planning on using VSTi's and VST's within your DAW ( digital audio workstation, in your case, Cool Edit Pro) you will be pretty limited in how much and how many of them you can use before you will start to experience "stutters", clicks and pops, and even freeze-ups of the program you are using.

Whether you choose a card-based or an external device, You need to check and make sure that the drivers for the audio capture devices are supported by your XP operating system.

There are some manufacturers who still make "legacy" (older, previous) drivers available for older OS's, but not all of them do, so you need to make sure that the device you choose is going to work with the system you have.

I'm not saying it won't work. I'm saying that you need to check to be sure that it will work.

Good Luck... let us know what you decide, or if you have further questions. ;)

-donny

Thanx for the quick reply donny..actually I ll use this pc only for final stereo.capture..all tracks will be from alesis hd24 >soundcraft dc2000>audiocard stereo input pc runs cool edit pro..I just wants big open sounds..my music band doing heavy rocks like Ghost..korn genre...at the moment I m still using my logic pro 9..and profire2626 ada..but still itb mix..

Anybody had the experience using lynx one or two and rme hdsp9632 for stereo capture please info about the sound quality ...especially big fat and nice headroom..thanx

Both Lynx and RME make very nice audio products, and are recognized as being "pro caliber" by most engineers. While I've never used the models you've mentioned, I'd find it hard to believe that they wouldn't give you what you want... although perhaps someone like Chris (audiokid ) or Marco (pcrecord ) might be more familiar with them.

Just stay away from anything Soundblaster, Soundwave, X-Treme Sound, Realtek ... or any other generic audio card that is designed for "general" computer audio use - like gaming, or streaming... a good indicator of quality will be the price; you can pretty much bet that anything that costs under $200 (maybe even more than that) is probably not going to give you the sound you want. ;)

FWIW
-d.

Chris please give a hint..thank you

I had a hdsp 9632 and liked it very much, solid driver and realtime mixer. I used the ADAT inputs most of the time but the TRS expension card made a good job as well.
I sold it because of it's limited channel counts.