Questions about cards.

[halfshark]

I am lost. I have been told that going through cards are the way to go becuase of less latency and thing of that nature.

My questions are what are the differences between all of them and how do they actually work. So far I have found Apogee, Lynx, and another company I forgot. The only thing I have ever recorded with in the past have been interfaces. I have been trying to learn most of this by talking to people since I cannot go to school right now.

All of them show all of them stats about them and I can understand that but what I am trying to figure out is how you would expand the amount of tracks in the future if needed. Also, all I see with the Lynx cards is that they come with a snake that have XLRs I/O on them. But what I am wondering is how it would work if I connected a interface to it or a preamp.

I know I am just missing sometime really stupid but like I said I am just learning about this stuff. If anyone could help me, or if I didn't make my question clear enough please let me know. I have done very little recording and just trying to figure out something new. Thanks.

[AndyH]

I'm not sure what you mean by "interfaces" and here I am answering anyway.

Anything that creates a digital recording from an analogue signal is reasonably called a soundcard and all soundcards are basically the same thing. Some soundcards live in computers and some live in little boxes of their own and have one or several of a number of interfaces with a computer (unless they are part of a self contained recorder, but the basics are still the same there). Some of those soundcard-to-computer interfaces are firewire, USB, ADAT, and S/PDIF.

You may mean an external soundcard that contains not only the convertors but microphone preamps and anything else, such as mixers, EQ, and compressor hardware, that the manufacturer chooses to put into the boxes. Those either have a PCI card in the computer or communicate with firewire or USB.

I guess all that introductory stuff is simply to establish communication terms. Perhaps others will already speak in your tongue and can ignore everything I've wrote.

Latency depends upon a number of factors. Since it isn't important in the things I do, I have no idea if you will necessarily get lower latency with a PCI soundcard.

As far as expanding the number of inputs, which is the way I read your "expand the amount of tracks in the future," there are a number of ways. Many professional soundcards will work together, especially multiple cards of the same type. If you have more PCI slots, and adequate computer power, you can stick in a second or third card and tell them to work together (often with a physical connection made between them). Some soundcards have ADAT options that allow another external soundcard to supply eight additional inputs through them.

Preamps can be used with any general soundcard. The preamp output feeds into a soundcard line level input. If the preamp output connectors are not the same as the soundcard input connectors, there are all sorts of cables with different plugs on each end and they work fine.

"how it would work if I connected a interface" If this interface is some external soundcard, something that produces a digital output, it can be used with many soundcards. They just need to have compatible digital I/O e.g. S/PDIF, firewire, ADAT, etc. Some cards have one thing, some have three others.

I suggest a few more specific questions so more people don't continue this little tradition of telling you all about the universe except for the parts that really interests you.

[halfshark]

By interfaces I ment the sound cards that are actually in a box like the little firewire ones or usb ones.

I think what I am more so wanting to know is stuff about cards like the Apogee Symophony card. I was just researching different web site and no matter how much I read I couldn't figure out how you plug stuff into it. All there is on the back is one little connector. I have seen that connector on some other interfaces (boxed) but I don't know what it is. Is it something like the adat lightpipe connection to where it can pick up on separate track from preamps and such or does it have some sort of dongle that comes with it. If it doesn't come with a dongle do I have to buy a separate interface with the tracks and preamp separately just to record to my computer?

[af-87PRS]

halfshark, if you can afford it ($100 +/-) jump right in and get a little box and try it out, have some fun!! Ya gotta start somewhere.

[AndyH]

Various external sound cards have a proprietary PCI card whose job it is to get the digital data into the computer. I've never dealt with any of them so I can't tell you very much about the electronics. Basically it is the same idea as for any multi-channel card with external convertors, such as one of the many available firewire cards. The Apogee Symphony is just a digital interface. It is not a soundcard, it is just the route into the computer for certain Apogee soundcards. If you thought of it as an Apogee firewire port you would have the essential idea, except that it may not work with anything except Apogee peripheries. There is a downloadable pdf manual for it that may tell you more.