Best sound card for recording?

Drakula

Senior member
Dec 24, 2000
642
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Hi all,

Sorry got questions again.

The title probably should be more likely "better" sound card for recording as the real best one probably cost more than most can afford.

It had been ages since last purchased a fairly good sound card. Last time, it was the Sound Blaster Live! Platinum series. Although, in between might have purchased couple of those cheaper sound cards by SIIG, if remembered correctly, but it was mainly unused.

Long story short, due to some things that had happened within the last few years, there had always been a project in mind that wanted to be done but never really came to fruition. And that was to convert analog stuffs, such as cassettes, 8mm, and some DV, to digital for faster and easier access, as well as backup and archiving.

Converting video seems pretty straightforward and kind of okay, but converting audio from analog to digital, I will require somewhat better sound card. Because while Live! is a good card, but at the time, it was plagued by problems such as latency issue, data corruption, motherboard drivers, and even sound card drivers. So its full potential was never really used. And basically, there are no updated driver support for it. The third party KX, or something, driver can still be found, but it was older ones and had not been updated for years.

During searching for a newer and hopefully better sound card for recording, there are 3 that seemed to come up as common results. The Asus Xonar, Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium, and Sound Blaster ZxR (Zx probably will do too).

Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium seemed to be recommend over ZxR for some because it has full ASIO support and support for 7.1. There are also some other reason, but forgot at the moment.

Xonar and ZxR seemed to be on the par but had read Xonar did/do suffer some driver issue with Windows 8.1, which should not be a problem since OS likely use will be Windows 7.


Anyway, back to the original question, out of these 3, or if there is some other sound card that is within affordable range like less $200 used, which will likely be the better sound card for analog to digital audio conversion?

By the way, is there a more preferable chipset that current sound cards work without less or minimal problems? Or is chipset and sound card issue a thing of the past? Kind of wary of sound card, driver, and chipset due to old issues.

Any inputs would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you all in advance!