Re: waveforms

Gill

It's not so much the "quality" of sampled instruments
- it's the sound - the timbre..

A lot of people were very happy with the wavetable
sounds in the SBLive cards and the Audigy.....

Your Soundblaster record panel should have "What-u-Hear"
and this is a very, very useful thing

You should be able to run a DAW app like sonar, cubase,
or whatever, and use your soundblaster's internal wavetable
to provide all the sounds Just load any midi file and point
the output channels to the sounds you want... piano / drums/
flute......

Then open a sound recorder like audacity (free) and set
the record input to "what-u-hear"

Then... click "record" in audacity and then click "play"
in cubase/sonar...

I've made this work (a long time ago) for a lot of colleagues
who were either composing or arranging stuff for a band

Creative labs cards did have their uses....

Let me know if this system works for you... The end-product
wav file will be independent of your speakers/card/etc so you
can burn it onto a CD and see what the living room Hi-Fi thinks
of it...

Good Luck!

djb





"Gill Smith" <gill.smith.999@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:gqWdnYOrFoidc33TnZ2dnUVZ8t-dnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Nicole Massey" <nyyki@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:jbqesg$jem$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"djb" <djb _at_ 12semitones.com> wrote in message news:52f26$4ee07743$53566bcf$19212@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
What is the problem with your soundcard?

If it's a real sound card, that's enough problem right there. But I wonder if he's using the correct term here.

A sound card is a device geared toward consumer uses that handles a synthesizer of some kind, usually wavetable synthesis these days, along with some sampling and microphone input. The needs for consumer audio require that these cards not have a flat frequency response -- if they did the consumer would have all kinds of problems with the microphone feeding back on a regular basis. Typical names are Realtek, Soundblaster, and their ilk. They're bought mostly at computer stores and can be embedded in the motherboard. They often have software that makes them sound better to untrained ears but that software adds a lot of coloration to the sound which isn't desirable for real audio production, and sometimes can't be turned off.

Audio cards are the ones designed for professional and semi professional use. Typical brands are M-Audio, Focusrite, MOTU, Steinberg, RMI, and other similar names. They're bought at music instrument stores, both physical and virtual. They have a flat response, multiple inputs and outputs, and things like MIDI and SP/DIF on some of the cards.
There's a major difference between these two types of cards. A good audio card makes a huge difference, especially for recording things with a lot of midrange content, like vocals and guitar. Most sound cards have a dip at the 1KHz range to fight feedback from the microphone, which is often in front of the speakers in many home computer setups and relatively close to them as well. This is why most sound cards are good for learning the basics of recording and production but not for turning out quality work.

very useful

I do actually have an M-Delta Audiophile 2496 card sitting on the shelf

but I was surprised that this card driving Cubase's Halione sound library gave an inferior sound compared to Soundblaster driving Good Olde MIDI

so I'm wary of 'upgrades'

--
http://www.gillsmith999.plus.com/


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