To help answer a
very common question that is posted time and time again on the forums, Scott
Fisher with the help of other posters on Looptalk has compiled the following
Soundcard FAQ. It answers common
questions about different uses of soundcards as well as answers common questions
about topics such as latency, ASIO, multi-client drivers, sound monitoring, etc.
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It's difficult to make specific card recommendations
given that soundcard manufacturers update hardware and drivers on a regular
basis. This FAQ therefore considers the main issues to ponder in your search for
sound-card Nirvana. It?s up to you to make sure the card you select is up to the
job. Posting a question in the FL loop-talk forum will usually give you a quick
answer.
Sound quality: For
FL Studio based music making, the only time your sound card will affect the
sound quality of your final rendered tracks is if you have used recordings or
samples made with it in your track.
Do
you record your own samples/sources? Yes/No?
No: Then you are probably ripping samples from
CD, using sample CD?s , downloading sounds off the internet and playing with
plug-in instruments. When you render your final track in FL your sound card
plays no part in the process. SBLive/Audigy/Terratec whatever ? it really won?t
make any difference to you. Save your money for VSTis and FL plugins, stick with
the soundcard your PC shipped with.
Yes: If you are recording quick one-shot
samples, in a mix - the quality of a basic 'built-in' soundcard recording will
probably be more than sufficient. If you are recording live instruments and
vocals and have decent quality mics and outboard
gear then you should look carefully at a soundcard with good
specifications or an external 'audio
interface' (USB or FireWire ) for
connecting all your sources. Expect to pay
between USD $200 to $1000 for
something 'good' depending on how many 'inputs'
(mic, line) you need.
That said, people do achieve excellent results using humble built-in
cards when paired with good external gear
(the trick is to feed the soundcard clean
line level signals
so the amplification of low level
sources (microphones for example) is done
outside the PC. It's probably wiser to
upgrade only after you have exhausted the possibilities of the card and
understand how it's limiting your
sound. An all too common human
failing is that we rush out and waste
money on technology in the hope of fixing a problems that we don't fully
understand. Witness the explosion in 'mastering' plug-ins
of recent years.
Do you play VST?s and
control FL via a MIDI keyboard or MIDI controller? Yes/No?
Quick word on latency: This is the delay
between you playing a note, tweaking a knob etc and the action happening (ie.
actual sound or effect being produced). Less is better, but after you drop below
20 ms you will find it harder to tell the difference between settings. For
reference, it takes about 2 ms for the mechanical clack of your PC keyboard to
reach your ears and about 10 ms for the sound of the drummer to reach you from
the other side of the room?are you having trouble with lip sync in every day
conversations? :-) ? just asking.
Yes: Then the lower the latency you can get the
better, to a point, 10-15 ms as good as most people need, achieve 10 ms and you are good to go.
Trying to get low latencies
out of the standard sound driver will push your hardware to the point of the
sound breaking up in FL (but you know this already, the buffer length setting changes the
latency). 20 to 40 ms is typical with standard drivers. The best
way to achieve really low latencies is with ASIO capable cards. The cheapest way
to get ASIO is ASIO4ALL (ships with FL Studio,
check the audio options). Next up is probably a Creative X-Fi Gamer. Great card for general FL Studio
duties.
No: Then you are
silly, buy a controller and stop mucking about!
Do
you need to simultaneously record and play from the same soundcard?
Yes: Then you need to make
sure that your soundcard is Full duplex. Most modern soundcards
are full duplex, and it should be considered essential if you want to record
anything from an external source whilst FL Studio (or any other App) is playing.
Be aware that if you use ASIO some soundcards won't operate in full duplex mode while using ASIO
mode. Check carefully with previous owners of the
card if this is important to you.
No: Be happy in the knowledge that you have
less cables hanging out the back of your PC.
Does anything other than FL Studio need to access your
soundcard at the same time?
Yes: Then make sure your card is 'Multi-client' capable. This is the ability of a Soundcard to
playback audio streams from multiple separate client applications, like, say,
Acid and Reason at the same time. All modern soundcards should be capable of
this, however ASIO again may cause some problems here, if ASIO and Multi-client
support are important don't forget to
check the card of your dreams can do it in ASIO mode.
No: Are you sure? Not even outlook saying
- 'you've got mail? You need to get a life and some
friends.
SoundFonts, do you want to use
them? Yes/No?
A quick word on SoundFonts (SF): SF cause all sorts
of confusion because originally Creative developed them and they only worked on
Creative hardware. Fortunately Today there are software SF players that take the
SF data and let you play the sounds on any PC. The FL Studio SF player is
excellent and should be on your shopping list. For those who don't know - a soundfont is just another
multi-sample format. For example a good Piano SF will be a collection of many
WAV files that are layered by velocity and split by note number. A SF may
alternatively contain all the instruments of the orchestra. The FL demo SoundFont player that comes with FL
will allow you to demo the sounds.
Yes: If you have a Creative card you will have
the added options of loading them into hardware, saving some CPU cycles
(although most the FL SF player is easy on the CPU) and using the Vienna
SoundFont Studio package - this allows you to edit and create your own SFs.
Vienna SF Studio that comes free with Creative cards or can be downloaded from
their website. If your card isn?t Creative brand then you will need the FL
Studio SF player or a 3rd party one. Get the Fruity SF player, it?s designed to
work seamlessly with FL, you know you want it.
No: Come on, everybody needs SF's. Download some from www.thesoundsite.net and
check them out on the FL Demo SoundFont player. Just think about how
professional your tracks will sound with a 24 Meg piano SF cutting through the
mix, do it now! You know Reason users are laughing at your wimpy default FL
Piano samples behind your back?time to get even.
Recording your mix: As the FL Studio manual
points out, the live FL mix you can hear through your sound card does not reveal
the true audio potential of the program. In order to keep processor overheads
sensible the live FL mix uses a low-CPU
load interpolation (see FL manual for detail) that provides real-time
playing at the cost of some quality/fidelity of the sound. Don't record the live
output from your soundcard, remember - you can't polish a turd, render your
tracks and then your turds will sparkle :-)
The best rendered sound
quality comes from the WAV format (remember CD is 44.1 kHz 16 Bit). MP3 format
is best reserved for sharing files on the internet or for your MP3 player. If
you are going to burn to CD it is wise to render to 44.1 kHz 16 Bit WAV files
and critically listen to the result (it can sound slightly different compared to
the live output).
Also remember your ability to hear the mix correctly
will be affected by your speakers, amplifiers, cabling and PC noise. Ideally you
should aim to have a good quality external amplifier and speakers and a good
pair of headphones (use both to monitor your final mix, live and then to check
the rendered version). The sky is the limit here, however for most applications
good quality home hi-fi gear will serve the purpose, so long as you know the
limitations of the speakers. The assumption is that if you are reading a FAQ on
FL sound issues then you aren't ready USD $10,000 worth of monitoring, who is?
:-)
In terms of PC noise google 'quiet pc'
and you will be on the path to serenity.
So what monitor speakers should I buy?
Answer 1: Colour free: One
that does not significantly colour the sound (colour = lumpy frequency response
and or speaker box/component resonances - knock on the speaker and listen). If
your monitor has big lumps and dips in the frequency response then you are
likely to compensate for these in the Mix/EQ settings, which will probably lead
to a shock when you hear it on another system. Murphys law of mixdown states
that - "A mix will always sound worse when tested on a system other than that on
which it was originally made". :-)
Answer
2: Everything is coloured: All speakers colour the sound (just some more
than others). You don't have to pay mega-bucks to get nice neutral speakers,
there are a lot of speakers in the USD $250-1000 range that will do very nicely.
Computer monitors won't do, sorry.
Answer
3: A good mix is possible with even very 'coloured' monitors, so long as
you know what that colour is and can compensate for it. In fact this is probably
one of the most important aspects of good mixing, getting to know the sound of
your gear and how that translates to other systems. Pick a CD with a sound that
you like and listen to it on your mix-down system...try to recreate that sound
in FL.
The FL Studio Support Team
