Lomaxx

Thanks for the quick reply, Eloise. You made me realize that i still was not precise enough about my plans/situation, although i already wrote a lot. =) I am planning to compose mostly electronic, but maybe also orchestral music in a good (as good as i can) quality. The type of music will variate and be influenced by a lot of genres (Pop, Funk, Jazz, Country, Classic, Rock, etc. pp) but the instruments will mostly be software synthesizers and samples of real instruments. Additional i will experiment with a microphone and samples from a mobile recorder. Also i will want to play the softsynths on a keyboard (thus the need for the low latency). No recording of live-played instruments or bands will be involved. Because of this I will mostly only need connections for a headphone, a microphone (can be a normal 2xline-in as i will be using a preamp), midi (for the control-keyboard) and maybe some sort of digital out for future purposes. Just some more analog outputs would be necessary in order to go for the above mentioned surround-setup with active speakers. So the Asus Xonar Essence ST would fit so far. At the moment i have a Maudio 2496, but that lacks a direct way of connecting the headphone and the option to go for surround. Also the ST seems to sound better. Just thus rumours about the bad latency made me fear.

Hello. Today i wrote an email to Computer Audiophile asking for some information, which was answered by an automated message pointing me to the forum. I didn't realize that the AC-computer is quite large and that there is a forum. I thought it would be sort of a small one-man-blog. But, well ... now i made it here and would like to ask the following. I am looking for a soundcard for the following usages: - stereo-hifi-listening (over headphones and 2 active studio-monitors) - music-creation with Propellerhead Reason 5/Record (over headphones and 2 active studio-monitors) - the option of applying more active speakers for surround-sound in gaming/movie-watching. - all the above in Win7 (32 or 64bit), but the card should also be supported quite well in Linux as i would use Windows only for gaming and running Reason/Record I am planning to use the upcoming Beyerdynamic DT 1350 as phones and something like a pair of Adam A8X/A7X, together with one or two rather precise-sounding music-listening-subwoofer (in opposite to a cinema-subwoofer focused on preasure) like the Nubert AW-991. For a surround-setup i was thinking of buying 2 additional studio-monitors for a 4:1 (or 4:2) setup. I think i am better of with a phantom-center over the front-pair of monitors instead of using a real one below or above my monitor as i am sitting pretty close to it compared to someone who is watching movies on a TV several meters away. For this i thought about using the Asus Xonar Essence ST together with Xonar H6 extension board. However i read some terrifying rumors about huge latency when using the ST(X).Have you got any experience how well the ST performs in 192-khz-ASIO-mode in music-production regarding latency or do you have the chance to test it with the cost-free available demo-version of Propellerhead Reason 5? Alternative recommendations would be welcome to. So far i was looking for a pci/pci-e card as i was hoping for the lowest latency there, but if there is a firewire-/USB-soundcard which suits my wishes it would be an option as well. Thanks for any information. Lomaxx