Mid-range sound card for recording

[yellowperil]

Does anyone have one of the following cards:

Midiman Delta Audiophile 2496
Echo Mia
Midiman Delta 44

?

Mainly I'm concerned about how well the drivers work in XP. Right now I'm leaning towards the Audiophile because of the MIDI connectors and price, but the RCA-type connectors look like a hassle. Thanks

 

[Goi]

I have the Audiophile 2496 but I use it in Win2K rather than XP. Its not giving me any problems, but I'm only using the digital coaxial output of the card. If you're thinking of doing multi-channel recording, I wouldn't recommend this card since there are better cards from M-Audio itself geared more towards recording, such as the Delta DiO, Delta 410, and Delta 1010 series. The Audiophile 2496 is however the cheapest. If you're doing mono or stereo recording, it would be sufficient.

 

[yellowperil]

Thanks Goi. Just curious, why is the Audiophile not good for multichannel recording? That's mainly what I'm looking for, I don't really need a gaming card (otherwise I'd keep my Santa Cruz). Thx

 

[Goi]

Well, the only reason I say that is due to its lack of I/O as compared to the other cards that I mentioned. IIRC the Audiophile 2496 only has 1 or 2 input and the same for output, so you'd only be able to do stereo or at most 4 track recording. Check out Midiman's site for more info. As far as sound quality is concerned, the Audiophile is at least as good as the others I mentioned, if not slightly better.