whats the best soundcard to use with openmpt?

sso · December 03, 2012, 04:24:41

?

LPChip · December 03, 2012, 09:44:45

A soundcard that has native support for ASIO and has a good sound quality.

There are many, so the best one comes down to what you need it for other than OpenMPT.

Saga Musix · December 03, 2012, 13:29:07

I'm not a salesman for ESI, but I love their products in the entry level price range and can only recommend them. If you still want to use a PCI card (and can live with the fact that it only has one stereo input and one stereo output), I can definitely recommend the ESI Juli@.
Since I have to stick to PCIe these days, I got myself their first PCIe card, ESI Maya44E, which has two stereo inputs and stereo outputs. This card has been superseded by the ESI Maya 44 XTe, which is basically the same thing, but without DIN MIDI plugs and some other extras, so if you want to use some legacy MIDI hardware, this might be a drawback.
You may want to look them up at the Thomann store.

sso · December 04, 2012, 01:04:17

thanks guys.

Saga Musix · December 15, 2012, 23:54:35

In fact, I just noticed that ESI released a PCIe version of the Juli@ - the ESI Juli@ XTe. I guess it can be just as good as the original Juli@, but obviously I can't try that right now!

sso · December 16, 2012, 09:34:04

ooh

yes, im rather interested in the julie cards.

maybe ill ask the wife to give me one for christmas. lol

thanks dude.

Voltrom · December 16, 2012, 20:08:42

Basically, you can use OpenMPT with your built in soundcard, i guess if you have a decent Dual-Core Processor you can run 20 inserts of vst`s simultanuosly without any problems.

I think the question here is what do you do with the audio-material when you export it and do a mixdown or a mastering.

Then you have to have a soundcard but what`s more important are the speakers. I own a pair of Hs80 and im pretty satisfied.

The newer soundcards have such a good sound and feature mostly (at least) the 24bit 96khz so i would not worry too much about the soundcard side of things.

I owned a M_Audio Delta 24/96 before i switched to a Laptop now i do my mixes and my masters with my Focusrite Saffire 6 and there is no hearable difference.

That are both Low Budget soundcards since i`m not a millionaire.

I don`t know how the market is now but from what i`ve heard you can`t do any wrong with the Juli@ or the Delta.

Greets

Saga Musix · December 16, 2012, 20:17:00

Even if all those new "HD" sound chipsets (i.e. onboard sound and the like) promise you 96khz audio playback and the like, they are still crap and often come with a lot of background noise, and naturally soundcards that don't have a dedicated ASIO driver won't give satisfactory latencies - ASIO4All helps here, but it also brings many restrictions, like no other application may access the soundcard. VST plugins are not processed by the soundcard, so in that way the soundcard doesn't matter at all. It also doesn't matter when doing a mixdown, since that is done in software too. It matters during recording and playback. If you use OpenMPT together with MIDI hardware or want to enter melodies live in the pattern editor or want smooth pattern scrolling, you need to work with ASIO drivers. All of this can be provided by an entry-level audio interface like the ones suggested in this thread - just stay away from gamer hardware.