Confused.

[talal107]

I am honestly confused about what a sound card is. I found out that since my computer is obviously not the best, i should probably get an external sound card because i do not have the dough to buy a new computer. Right now i have FL Studio and am using ASio4all or whatever as a the driver. ASIO is terrible, at least for me. I looked into the external sound cards and found the "Creative Soundblaster X-FI Surround 5.1" for about $50. i want to get it. but then i also realized that i have no idea what i am buying. I can't remember where is saw it on, but sometimes the audio interface IS also a sound card. Although i do not know what i am saying. I am also looking into audio interfaces so: Could i buy an audio interface (for example: Akai EIE Pro) and also buy the Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Surround 5.1? Or, would i just have to buy one. And if so which one? Which is better? etc...

Thanks in advance for answering.

[af-TimOBrien]

Creative = gamer
They are build primarily as card for gamers to "enhance the experience" which means fudging the sound.
Music production cards are built to be honest.

Yes a sound card is an interface. It connects or interfaces hardware (microphones, mixers, etc.) to your computer.
Tomato/tomatoe, potato/potatoe. English has many words that mean the same thing.
Early soundcards (like Creative's soundblasters) had midi synths built into them for games to generate sounds so they were called soundcards.
Music production cards generally don't have midi synths in them as you can do that better now by software.

The bottom line is that the built-in soundcard in all computers has about 40cents worth of chips for cheap beeps, boops and light gaming.
The cheap chips and high-latency drivers are not good for music production (asio4all works but is a band-aid that fakes asio)
You want to replace it with something better.
(and you only need ONE as asio only works with one soundcard at a time)

[talal107]

Creative = gamer
They are build primarily as card for gamers to "enhance the experience" which means fudging the sound.
Music production cards are built to be honest.

Yes a sound card is an interface. It connects or interfaces hardware (microphones, mixers, etc.) to your computer.
Tomato/tomatoe, potato/potatoe. English has many words that mean the same thing.
Early soundcards (like Creative's soundblasters) had midi synths built into them for games to generate sounds so they were called soundcards.
Music production cards generally don't have midi synths in them as you can do that better now by software.

The bottom line is that the built-in soundcard in all computers has about 40cents worth of chips for cheap beeps, boops and light gaming.
The cheap chips and high-latency drivers are not good for music production (asio4all works but is a band-aid that fakes asio)
You want to replace it with something better.
(and you only need ONE as asio only works with one soundcard at a time)

But i also needed the Creative Soundblaster because i bought the Logitech z506 and wanted to be able to have the full surround sound effect. Because right now i have the green wire plugged into my laptop, but everywhere i go they say that it sounds better if you had the Soundblaster.

BTW: the logitech z506 are a rocking set of speakers especially for their price. love their bass!

[af-TimOBrien]

They are 'rocking' because they are lying to you by 'enhancing' the sound. As I said, for gaming.

That is not what you want for music production.
Your mixes will sound bad on anything but your own system.

If you get serious about music production you'll find you want to have a gaming computer and another music computer.