OmegaDL50

After a disappointing purchase of a SB Audigy SE which to my great displeasure found out it does not support ASIO let alone it's inability to use Soundfonts in Windows 7 for that matter. As a matter of fact the usability of Soundfonts being the very reason why I bought the card to begin with (which is advertised as a feature for it)

I am not particularly a fan of buying a product and not being able to use it for the primary purpose I bought it for.

I've decided to hunt for an old SB Live! card due to my decent experience with an old SB Live! Value card I used to own.

I am a aspiring musician who likes to create IT's and other Module based music using a Tracking Program.

I've just started dabbling into FL Studio for it's extensive usage for VST effects.

I found an old SB0060 (SB Live! 5.1) on Ebay for a reasonable price of $6

I use a Midi capable keyboard via USB. What I hope to do is utilize the Soundfont manager and ASIO for usage of being able to record multiple tracks at once.

I probably should have asked here first before I put the money down for the card (not that $6 is much to lose anyways) but according to the drivers list, the SB0060 is compatible with the kX drivers and and seems to be a decent card for needs on the music creation end of things.

Is there anything I should be aware of prior to installing this card into my PC? Is this card I bought going accomplish what I hope to do, especially on the soundfont end of things?

Thanks for any help in this matter.

-Mr.Fridge

I liked the "Thanks for the help in this matter" int he end, we will not answer other questions in this post But I'm just beeing sarcastic.

To the point:
I have very little experience with recording to the PC, but the little I do know, is that Creative cards are ment for gamers and listeners.
I use a Creative X-Fi Fatality and it's freakin' awsome, but, see, the problem is Windows 7 and not the card themeslves, and I'll explain:

Windows 7 does not support Direct-Sound at all! which is why you cannot use ASIO with Windows 7. Some programs virtualize Direct-Sound with 7 and so you get the thing working, but not quite as good and easily as you would expect from a high-priced sound card.

Besides, excuse me for beeing ignorant, but don't ou need multiple Line-Ins for a Multiple recording at the same time?
As far as I know, for recording in high quality, you have no other choice but to buy an external sound card...

Well, I'm still waiting to see what happends with you 6$ card, I would love to actually know it's working

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...:::I'll tell you something: If you'r a Fridge,
don't be surprised that it's ALLWAYS winter:::...

Tyrsonswood

Leaving Win7 out of it for a minute...........

With any "Live!" or 10k1 card you will be limited to 2 analog channels for recording. The Audigy or 10k2 series allows for 4 and with the drive bay 6 analog channels. (NOTE: I'm talking analog channels here) The 10k1 or 10k2 is the DSP chip that is at the center of the card, these number of channels I'm mentioning are hardware limitations of the cards. The 10k2 also has more available room for soundfont loading so of the series the 10k2 cards are the better card for making/recording music.... that's not to say the SB0060 is a slouch as it is a good card as well. There are ways of squeezing a few more channels out of a 10k2 card using SPDIF and a second or third card if you have the PCI slots and chain the cards via SPDIF. kX drivers and some of the associated plugins were allowing for 8 or more channel recording rigs using Audigy and Live! cards under XP.....


Then Win7 came along and ruined it........

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OmegaDL50

Well I have no intentions of using multiple cards.

And most of the music I create is mostly midi material with the occasional live recording / realistic sample thrown in.

I do NES chiptunes and mostly piano arrangements. As a matter of fact I don't think I'll ever utilize an amount of 64 polyphony (i.e 64 simultaneous sounds playing at once) as the most I've ever used was probably 20 to 30 separate samples at once.

I'm not trying to turn my house into a sound studio if that is what you interpreted out of my initial post. I just want to create simple music.

Tyrsonswood

I was just laying out the hardware limits of the two cards..... Not saying you should go that far.

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peate

I've been using a SB Live Platinum 0060 for over 10 years and it still works flawlessly. I have the Live drive and can get 6 separate analog inputs plus 2 digital inputs and midi in-out. All accessible with kX. It's worth the trouble to get your hand on a used Live drive. Without the drive, you're stuck with the AC97 input unfortunately. I think the Audigy 1 SB 0090 drive would also fit the Live card. I'd love to find a used Audigy 0090 for a good price, anybody? LOL After all it's X-mas. ;-)

Tyrsonswood

I've got two Sb0090's with the I/O drives and nobody's going to get them..... "Mine, I tell you...... MINE!"

I've got the SB0060 with the IR drive also, and yes, it's the same drive except the Audigy 1 drive has the firewire port that the Live card can't use. Just as long as the 40 pin connector is the AUX_EXT the drives will interchange. The AD_EXT on the newer Audigy 2 and up is different.

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OmegaDL50

If you are serious about wanting to buy that SB0090 then here is the only relevant link I can think of.

Sound Blaster Audigy EAX HD Sound Card (SB0090) - eBay (item 220638628037 end time Jan-12-11 12:15:05 PST)

The difference between buying used over buying refurbished is quite huge. Used cards could be a risky purchase as you may not necessarily know the actual condition of the card, You could plug in it in and have it work for two weeks and it dies.

Refurbished however in my experience is basically a card that was repaired to manufactured working condition. They can't call it new because the card was used and they cannot call it used because the card itself failed but was repaired to original condition.

Of course if this isn't what your looking for, you can always do a google shopping search for SB0090 and pick from amongst the the cards that are listed for sale (just like I did with the example above)

thomasabarnes

I think the best kX compatible card is the Audigy 2 ZS Platinum. It works great with the kX drivers, and I think every feature works as it should without issue. From current searches, it seems to be selling for $140! From user reports here back in the older days, this card got good reports for kX compatibility, and hardware wise, it's the better quality card than any made before it! In case you're interested, here's a link: http://reviews.cnet.com/sound-cards/...-30558407.html

I remember when I bought the Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro, the flagship of the Audigy 2 ZS series of cards, at that time, I got it from EBay for $99 about 3 years after that line was released. With the Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro being the higher model, I would think the Audigy 2 ZS Platinum should be less expensive than the Audigy 2 ZS Platimum Pro, and espcially more than 5 years out from the initial release of the Audigy 2 ZS series of cards

Anyway, I just wanted to say, in my opinion, if you can afford it, the Audigy 2 ZS Platinum would be the better buy of any kX compatible card, because of a combination of sound quality and kX compatibility , except maybe for the professional E-MU cards, as they have much better sound quality.

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May a song always touch you in a positive way.
SONAR X1D Expanded, Windows 7 Pro 64Bit, MOTU UltraLite MK3, 150 GB HDD, 250 GB HDD, 1 TB x2 HDD 7200 rpm

My Music Production: Top 40, Contemporary Christian, Pop/Rock, Decent Rap, Inspirationals, and Children Songs

OmegaDL50

I just got in the card in the mail yesterday and installed the kX drivers and I'm amazed at the sound quality.

For a card that was manufactured in 2000 being roughly 11 years old out performing in terms of audio quality compared to my more recent audio solutions is quite amazing and makes me wonder how much more powerful the EMU20K (X-Fi) cards are over the EMU10K series.

Rather then dealing with the p16v and p17v chipsets perhaps it would have been better off that Creative made a EMU10K4 instead. (not that a 4th revision of the EMU10k cards exists (as far as I know) but it's just me speaking from a hypothetical standpoint)

I know that the EMU10K3 wasn't as widely used...but from what I've read online it was heavily based on the EMU10K2 with some slight tweaks.

Txalapartion

I agree with thomasabarnes, best value cards for musicians needing to record from MIDI, microphone, strings, etc. using kx drivers (apart from e-mu cards) are Audigy 2 Platinum and Audigy 2 ZS Platinum, the only difference between the two being better capabilities in the ZS for digital to analog output conversion in 5.1 speaker systems.
In my opinion, though pro series (with external hub) are superior, providing better ADC chips and increased number of inputs and outputs, they are not fully supported by kx drivers, and being the kx support basicly the only reason why these old cards are still so enjoyable nowdays (kx supports Win 7) I would recommend to stay away from any tecnical improvements made since Audigy 2 non pro series. For a basic recording system Live! series provides amazing value and Audigy series EMUks a bit more registers for kx plugin configurations.