best soundcard for recording studio
 

hi i am building a computer for a small recording studio. Im pretty much a newb to linux, but ive heard that linux would be great for a recording studio box. i just need to know what sound card will work well with redhat 9 and still have the necessary performance and quality for recording. ive looked at the Audigy 2 ZS and thats what i would prefer since it is awesome for games in windows (going to have dual-boot). thanks for your help!!!!

You should probably check out the Reviews and Forum sections at http://www.computermusic.co.uk

ok thanks

Linux does *not* make a good studio box, at least not at this time.

Sure, with kernel patches such as the preempt and lowlatency patches you get very good responsiveness from Linux based systems, but hardware support is so-and-so (the Alsa project is doing a lot to improve the situation) and software support is downright horrible.

I have a studio. The current studio computer, which is pretty much the core of the studio, is a plain homebuilt AMD-based PC running Windows 2000. It has a very nice Hoontech/STAudio DSP24 Mk.I soundcard (8 in, 8 out) with an ADC/DAC2000 breakout box with phantom gain on the two first channels. Add a mixer, half a million microphones, even more cables, and you pretty much have a studio....

...or do you? Well up to this point, Linux does well. Alsa even supports the soundcard (woo yay). But on the software end, things doesn't look so bright. The most promising project out there is Ardour, but it has been "promising" for years now. Other than Ardour, there is *no* open source (or proprietary!) project that can even begin competing with Emagic Logic Audio.

Trust me, I'd go with Linux right away if there was a decent HD recording environment available for Linux, but Ardour just doesn't cut it (yet!).

Håkan

I'd agree, minimum equipment here bog standard soundblaster audigy and an old Korg synth and me old banjo :) ...decent enough for home messing about with....problem is getting software that can compare with the impressive results of the Sonar and Cubases of the world which unfortunately at this moment in time I don't know of any linux equivalent. Tried Ardour but it never compiles properly even after hunting down and installing all it's dependencies....maybe when it matures.

ok. would the new audigy 2 zs make a good sound card? its really attractive because it has 7.1 support, EAX4.0, and has some great software bundles that come with it.

Well my normal audigy does me fine - in Sonar with at multiple audio tracks with multiple effects and midi all playing along in synch whilst recording another audio track on top of it, I haven't managed to max out my cpu or hard drive out yet using it (one day when I create a prog rock masterpiece maybe)
I guess the Audigy 2 performs even better, for a simple home recording studio it'll do fine although of course your processor speed (espically if you use virtual synths) and hard drive speed will come into it too. I used to get all the magazines reviewing all the gear and that but I had to stop as it makes making me ill not being able to afford it. Depends how professional you want to go - hw-tph above probably knows more about it.

would an athlon64 3200+ and a 7200rpm 8mb 120gig SATA HD do the trick?

Well, I'm athlonXp 2100 ATA133 So,

Oh, yeah :)

I recommend the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card.

Check out Turn-Key Linux Audio