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Hi, I need some advises

I'm going to buy an external sound card for my PC notebook. I'm traveling a lot and sometimes I need good sound card for control of already recorded material or connection of the PC with studio gear.

I'm thinking for:
Tascam US 122 /great, but only 24/48Khz
Terratec Phase 26 USB / a lot of input and outputs/
M Audio Fireware Audiophile
Lexicon Omega Studio

If someone have some experience with this sound cards?

Thank you very much in advance!

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Comments

ghellquist Tue, 03/08/2005 - 12:36

Philbul,
I think you can read all about the specifications at the company sites. Once you have done that your choices will probably already be focused a bit more.

When I did a similar exercise, I finally nailed it down in that I did not want to have a separate power supply for the sound-card. As I have a PC laptop this narrowed down the selection to USB-cards, not a single PC laptop available today can supply firewire power. And some of the cards you mentione requires a separate wall-wart.

My selection finally was the Digidesign MBox. In my eyes (and ears) it has decent mic-pres and decent AD, enough to allow me to do on location classical recording. There is also a decent DA and a decent headphone amplifier. I use the word decent to be clear that it is clearly above the "really budget level", but probably a bit below the "world class level", sort of in the middle ground. Of course you get PT LE with the MBox, but you can also use it with other applications.

All the cards you have mentioned are in my eyes, mostly from reading specs, in this same middle ground, meaning that you could probably select anyone of them and be reasonably happy.

Gunnar.

anonymous Wed, 03/09/2005 - 14:12

Hi Gunnar, thank you for your posting.

I checked with details all available information from the company sites. Unfortunately in other sites I didn't find the reviews. I'm looking for middle level sound card mostly for home use - When we record we work in one of the best studios equipped with SSL, Genelec, Tascam DTRS, Lexicon, Neumann, etc.

I don't think I will use this card for recordings.

My questions was more for compatibility of cards with PC, quality of the AD and preamp-s and problems which come sometimes after frequent use.