How important is a soundcard really?

Niels,

Very important and very handy.

My PC is a P4, 1.66 Mhz and 1 GB RAM and i use the onboard soundcard.
I only got 1 problem, i can't use too much vst's. My solution? I stream each vst into wave and then delete the vst. An audiotrack instead and voila. A lot of memory saved. And offcourse on each audiotrack a variable filter as effect. With this methode i can use 40 generators at ones ( is enough for the whole song ).
So with an unproffesional PC you can still do the job, but it's more work.

I'm saving money now to buy a new PC, an Apple, and then i won't have problems anymore with memory and responstime. Then i'll have a really good workhorse.
I'm doing the job now for 1 year with my PC and i get tired of it. Because if you streamed it to wave and want to change the melody you can't. Have to make a new wave file.
And because of a slow PC i cant use Cubase, Reason or whatever. So i use Orion Platinum, because this program is very light and handy to use. Very easy.

So if you can, buy RAM and a good soundcard. You'll save much hours of work. :-)

Hi Niels,

Next to the reasons explained by Changeless a solid soundcard has more advantages. For instance, you will have much more "headroom" when mixing on a good soundcard. You can also work on a higher bitrate and/or Khz, which improves the sound quality enormously. Although the final master will be burned on a CD at a standard 16bit 44Khz, you will find out that working on a higher quality helps to get the mix right because you have more control on what you are doing (all sounds will have a more distinguished place in the mix on a higher rate).
Another thing that will occur when working with a solid soundcard is the improvement of realism of the sound because of its high quality AD/DA converting. (Analog to Digital converting) You can make an arrangement and listen to it on your speakers, but you can only listen to it truthfully if your soundcard can convert the digital information to analogue correctly.

Some good reasons to invest in a solid soundcard i.m.o.

Grtz,
RAF

ps: We now work with a Lynx Aurora-8 and are very, very satisfied with it's power, headroom and conversion, but there are many similar (and cheaper) solutions in the market nowadays.
ps 2: @Changeless -> did you knew you can use the "Freeze" option in Cubase to make a temporary render of a synth without losing the possibility to re-edit the sounds? Afterwards you can "unfreeze" the rendered track and alter the settings of the synth again. But than again this is just a work-around for when you don't have enough CPU-power...

RAF,

Thnx for the tip, i didn't knew that till know :-) I will try this, when i buy Cubase, cause last time i downloaded a cracked version, but this wont help me if i want to publish tracks. So i bought Orion Platinum ( cheaper ) to work legal. But there all expensive so i can only buy one at a time. This is my first year producing tracks, so im still a rookie and that's why im still on an old workstation. My expences for this year were about 500 euros. That's enough for a rookie. Next year a new workstation and that's it. I know this will slow down from growing in my skills etc. but i know it's good to grow slowly and i know to not expect, that i will be a good producer within two years. It takes more than that i guess.

So in the meanwhile, i'll stay practicing my skills and build up a little fanclub :-)

I hope in the future, when i have a better workstation and more skills, i still can count for good tips from you and others. :-)

Grtz,

Changeless

Hi Changeless,

No worries. Funkerman and I always say: "It's not about the kitchen, it's about the cook!" ;)
So keep on investing your time in exploring sound(s) and working with your system. Although there might well be better (and much more expensive) solutions in the market, the principle of working with sound will be always the same. Sequencers, instruments and plugins can have a different shell, but their usage will be the same.

Grtz,
RAF

I think that the "kitchen" is very important. Power PC together with high quality soundcart and speakers help you to hear every sound and effects in your mix. Necessary is also acoustic. If producer has good equpment the production is easier and more effective. But I think that there is a main problem in good production :) Everything must be perfect - Idea, Equipment, Singer and the last thing is happiness :)