USB Sound Card Recommendations

[BeatLeSS]

Hi Guys,

Piecing together my studio kit as I'm saving money for it. Should have enough dosh to get the whole kit n kaboodle by my birthday (July).

Need to start looking at sound cards for my studio set up - for the time being it also has double up as my take on the go piece of kit, something that I can use for performance.

Traktor would be good to look into down the track, and I read everywhere that you need their specific sound cards in order to do this, though couldn't this be circumvented with ASIO4ALL drivers? I'd need 2 (L+R) outputs for each deck I want to use though yeah, or does this get virtually managed within Traktor when I'm using controllers?

My main focus will be Ableton Live, I don't feel I'll need any more than 1-2 mic inputs - will only be recording the odd sound/vocal at this stage and If I plan to do more later I'll upgrade.

Who's using what 'round here?

[Mitch]

I have an mbox mini ii

It's fairly basic:

2 inputs, then output to monitors + you can plug headphones into the front and mute the monitors if you like.

Gets the job done

[LabRat]

Traktor sound cards would be the way to go if you're playing with traktor. My sound card (which will probably need upgrading soon anyway) is only a production thing so I'm not sure what else would be fit for live stuff

[gezzy]

try and look for a gigaport sound card

4 stereo channel output siple set up

[AlphaFive]

Ive got a NI soundcard. It's a solid unit. Cant imagine why a non-Traktor soundcard would matter, but im not a Traktor user so maybe theres something im missing.

 

Whatever you get, make sure it's got MIDI I/O and enough outputs to service your needs now and in the future.