V___ Posted August 28, 2007 Share Posted August 28, 2007 Ok, so Iv recently come into a bit of cash (yay promotion) and Im wanting to improve my setup.... as nice as it is, it is starting to limit me a bit (before you say 'blame the user not the tools' keep in mind Iv been using an onboard laptop soundcard with $20 speakers) First off, what I have and want to continue using: my laptop (running Reason 3.0 mostly), an 88-key velocity sensitive elec piano, and a Behringer BCF2000 mixer. My purchase list - Korg PadKontrol, new speakers, a soundcard, CDJs+mixer. My budget is at MAX $8000AU ($6.6kUS), but I'd prefer to keep it around $7000AU. About $5200AU is booked out on the CDJs and mixer, leaving me a comfi $2000 on the rest. PadKontrol is around $350 where I checked. My first problem is in regard to the soundcard and my gear. I obviously dont want latency issues with any of the stuff I have, and I want it to work well together. My assumption is the piano would lead through the mixer to the soundcard, but then where is the padkontrol plugging in: soundcard or USB to laptop? Does all my gear need to be/benefit from being in the soundcard rather than the compy? What soundcard best suits my desired setup? Next, monitors, having gone through acouple of other threads/places, I'v found good reveiws and prices for the KRK Rokit RP6s ($750AU a pair). This is just for recreational production, and home DJ use. Is anything else recommended (these are just down the street from me, so easy access too, bonus). I'd probably want to use good headphones occasionally too, Pioneer HDJ-1000 headphones come with the DJ kit, would these be accurate for production? Lastly, any highly recommended items? Anything to keep in mind? Cheers for any help! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lunahorum Posted August 28, 2007 Share Posted August 28, 2007 what does a pad control do? If all it does is send midi messages, just assign the extreme upper or lower of your 88 keyboard to do that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dannthr Posted August 28, 2007 Share Posted August 28, 2007 If you're going to keep using your laptop, I would suggest getting a PCMCIA based sound card if possible because you're more likely to get better latency that way and even if a firewire and USB 2.0 card might be fast enough (and they probably are) you'll have to contend not only with the drivers of your soundcard, but the interaction of those drivers with your USB/Firewire chipsets in addition to whatever plain driver issues you have. PCMCIA will cut out one of the middle men, so to speak. That's not to say that there aren't good, reliable firewire cards out there, but just to consider what is available--when choosing your stuff. You'll also want to consider, if you're going to be doing a fair amount of recording, the quality of your A/D transfer and potentially your D/A output for proper monitoring. If you've got some cash to spend, you might want to look at an RME or Lynx card, because they're championed to have world-class A/D/A transfer and they're widly accepted in the pro communities as good, solid sound interfaces. They also tend to be fairly expensive. They tend to be out of my budget, for sure. There are a lot of people who dig Presonus, but there are also a LOT of bad reviews for both product quality and support out there. There are a fair amount of people who dig Focusrite, but I wouldn't recommend them unless you were going to do a lot of mic work. I have a buddy who used the E-MU 1616 for a while, really enjoyed it, but the PCMCIA version had the card blazing hot, so that didn't work out too well. Otherwise he would've kept it. The other thing you want to consider about your sound card is what kind of processing it will do for you. If you're using a lap top, getting a DSP sound device is going to lighten the CPU load when doing sound processing. Some of the upper-end prosumer devices and many of the mid to lower end pro devices will do this for you. I know that RME is one of the few DSP manfuacturers that gives your comp an internal mixing bus, letting you route audio signals all over your computer. Very cool. Just some thoughts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V___ Posted August 28, 2007 Author Share Posted August 28, 2007 what does a pad control do? If all it does is send midi messages, just assign the extreme upper or lower of your 88 keyboard to do that. I'm assuming its MIDI messages, and I probably COULD use the the keyboard to do whatever I'd usethe PadKontrol for, but its is a completely different interface. I'l look into PCMIA soundcards, I'd only been looking at USB ones really... Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
analoq Posted August 29, 2007 Share Posted August 29, 2007 no, don't bother with PCMCIA. i'll give a few reasons: - limited choices. it is unlikely you will find a PCMCIA audio interface that fits your needs ideally. Firewire gives you more options. - there's no "cutting out the middle man". where Firewire may have a problem with a particular Firewire chipset, a PCMCIA device may have a problem with the PCMCIA controller or motherboard chipset. potential compatability problems either way. - your next laptop may not have PCMCIA. it is being phased out in favor of ExpressCard. i've owned more audio interfaces than i can count on one hand, and Firewire has given me the best performance with the fewest headaches. only if your laptop doesn't have firewire would i bother looking into anything else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fray Posted August 29, 2007 Share Posted August 29, 2007 Since we're talking about audio interfaces... does firewire have much of a leg up on USB 2.0? I know it's better, but by how much? Edit: oh hell, I'll just do a google search and answer my own question. From a forum post at tweakheadz: its an issue of performance. USB 2.0 allocates bandwidth differently from firewire. for 2 channel units there are soem stuff that works pretty good like hte Mbox 2 but larger interface, usb 2.0 is harder to keep in sync and more supcetable to jitter because of its design. the Design relys heavily on CPU for allocation of bandwidth, which the firewire protocol is not, meaning that there is many many more software interrupts and this increases jitter and latency. Firewire in general is more stable, because it does not rely nearly as much as the CPU to allocate bandwidth, and will achieve lower latency, and keep in sync easier because of fewer Interrup requests. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tgfoo Posted August 30, 2007 Share Posted August 30, 2007 You may also consider getting PCMCIA firewire card. That would give your computer firewire ports and would open up your interface options. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V___ Posted August 30, 2007 Author Share Posted August 30, 2007 My laptop has firewire ports already, so I'm set there.... Iv done a bit more reading on what I want to go for, and been giving favorable looks at the M-Audio FireWire 410. It has good reveiws from what I can see, its supported and has a great name, and allows me room to grow my setup in the future. That said, Im not sure if I'm completely understanding the sound cards relationship with the computer... If people use multiple MIDI devices, why do so many sound cards only have 1 set of MIDI i/o? So now Im thinking if MIDI information comes in through a USB port, it goes to the soundcard (regardless of how its attached). So here is the... ULTIMATE QUESTION: Does my piano have to be plugged directly into the external soundcard to get low latency? My setup is looking to be around 6900AU atm, I'v just got to find time to check out the KRKs and their competitors... this is where I get worried, my experiences with high quality monitors are very limited so I dont know if I'l be able to choose wisely upon comparison.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fray Posted August 30, 2007 Share Posted August 30, 2007 My laptop has firewire ports already, so I'm set there....Iv done a bit more reading on what I want to go for, and been giving favorable looks at the M-Audio FireWire 410. It has good reveiws from what I can see, its supported and has a great name, and allows me room to grow my setup in the future. That said, Im not sure if I'm completely understanding the sound cards relationship with the computer... If people use multiple MIDI devices, why do so many sound cards only have 1 set of MIDI i/o? So now Im thinking if MIDI information comes in through a USB port, it goes to the soundcard (regardless of how its attached). So here is the... ULTIMATE QUESTION: Does my piano have to be plugged directly into the external soundcard to get low latency? My setup is looking to be around 6900AU atm, I'v just got to find time to check out the KRKs and their competitors... this is where I get worried, my experiences with high quality monitors are very limited so I dont know if I'l be able to choose wisely upon comparison.... Ultimate Answer: No. Just to confirm -- the two possible setups you're talking about are: #1 Piano -------(Audio)---- Soundcard | (USB midi) | PC USB Port and #2 Piano -------(audio)----- Soundcard | (MIDI cable) | Soundcard MIDI port In #1, the MIDI does not go to your soundcard at all. The piano's USB driver installed on your computer basically acts as its own MIDI interface, and you'll select it as the MIDI in/out in your DAW instead of the soundcard. That's fine, it's not going to hurt your latency -- the jitter and latency times on modern USB MIDI drivers are at worst within ~1ms of other interfaces. That's way less than you can notice. And there's the answer to your question of "Why only one MIDI port?" -- people generally only use the serial MIDI ports for older devices that don't have builtin USB interfaces. Plus that's what MIDI channels are for -- you can chain several devices together with MIDI cables; you're just limited to 16 timbres total. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V___ Posted September 2, 2007 Author Share Posted September 2, 2007 Excellent, thanks for that Well I'm picking up my Edirol FA-101(40% off, it was cheaper than the FA66) and Kork PadKontrol sometime in the next week, and will use the time to check out some more monitors - I'm down to either KRK Rokit 8s, Event Tuned-Reference 6s, or Mackie HR624s (bit more $$$ than expected but....) Any one have any experiences with these, or other high recommendations? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
analoq Posted September 2, 2007 Share Posted September 2, 2007 i have the old HR624s, and they are very nice. they replaced Event PS6s (precursor to the TR series you're interested in). KRK are good, but i haven't had good experiences with the Rokit series.. others here seem to like them, however. regardless, there's not a huge difference in that range of monitors. any of those will serve you well for remixing. cheers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fray Posted September 3, 2007 Share Posted September 3, 2007 I like the Rokit 5s I have, although I haven't had much to compare them to. Rokit 8s will have better bass, so go with them over the 5 if you have the desk space (I don't). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.