PC Soundcards

I wouldn't recommend using the PCs sound card to do the recording. The A/D and D/A converters are not that good. I'd suggest going with an interface if you want to record, the converters are better and the audio quality is better. Quality audio is key to recording.

 

PC sound cards are designed to get sound OUT of a computer. That's it! For recording, you need to get sound IN and OUT of the computer. PC sound cards have 1/8in jacks and plugs for cheap computer speakers and cheap computer microphones. For recording, you need to plug in real microphones, XLR cables, and instruments, and 1/4in cables, and line-level signals, and RCA cables. PC sound cards just aren't designed for that.

If you want good PC sound for PC games... get a good PC sound card. If you want to do recording... get a real audio interface. BTW, most interfaces will also output great sound for those games.

 

there are only a few players in the sound card field. creative is probably the largest, by far, but there is also turtle beach and m-audio. m-audio made a really decent card and their background is more in the audio department and not just in the pc cards.
creative did make a card that had a front panel with 1/4" and midi access. i will need to look into it as i have been out of the business for a couple years.
i think that creative takes a big hit because of how large they are and because of several driver issues

 

see what happens when you take a couple years off of work.... it looks like m-audio is the only one left, of the three i mentioned, still making what i remembered.

try to find one of these: http://www.terratec.net/en/products/DMX_6Fire_USB_2084.html

 

There are some internal pci interfaces that are designed for recording purposes. I suppose they would work OK. They just seem to me to be.. restrictive. For my purposes, I chose an external interface that communicates with the computer by firewire. Many of the USB 2.0 interfaces work quite well, also. I think the internal vs external decision is a personal preference thing. However, it seems evident that the choices in internal interfaces is somewhat limited.

 

PCI card choices
http://www.sweetwater.com/c703--PCI_Audio_Interfaces

But I wouldn't worry to much about specs. What do you need, 4 or 8 channels simultaneous recording? - USB can do that fine. Firewire or Thunderbolt no problem.

This is one of the best deals going for $65

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0042Z3ADI/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_uVGZqb1MPS9MP

The specs aren't going to approach a PCI or firewire card, but it's going to work fine for most people.