recommended audio card / which driver?

[vocodor]

sorry - my knowledge of current audio standards is a bit outdated, so please forgive my questions

1. what's the best audio card (at a fair price) which performs great with buzz?
2. are external audio cards any good yet? (eg. usb3?)
3. the driver should support multi usage (dunno how it's called): my previous asio driver/setup blocked the audio device for buzz exclusively so i didn't have audio in my browser, wave-editor ..
4. which drivers are recommended for the latest buzz build? asio or wasapi? should i use asio4all?

thanks in advance

[mridlen]

1. Do you need anything higher than 44.1KHz?
2. Yes, most of the good ones these days are external.
3. I think that varies, but usually ASIO makes things tricky. I can use ASIO in Buzz, and then WASAPI in my browser, but only if I start Buzz first. (E.g. I can't load up YouTube and then open Buzz.)
4. Polac ASIO has the best features, and I use that most of the time.

[vocodor]

thanks - which card do you have?

[Evelon]

Anything RME, MOTU, Metric Halo, Focusrite. Heck, even Presonus.

[mridlen]

I currently use the M-Audio FastTrack, which works great, but it has some serious drawbacks.

Next one I get will be something future proof and USB (USB seems more future proof than firewire or thunderbolt). I'm looking at the Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 (plus a D/A converter) so that I can send 10 channels of stereo to venue soundsystems for mixing purposes. Or it would allow me to record an entire band multitracked, live. I'm trying to get a more elaborate setup with a light show and such (people dig a sequenced light show).

[mcbpete]

mridlen - I've had a Focusrite Scarlett 8i6 for about 18 months and it works brilliantly, I had to replace my Audiofire as my new laptop had a really shoddy firewire controller, but yeah this works brilliantly

The mix control thing to route your i/o ports is a little strange but there's some good tutorials out there (including from Focusrite themselves) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRbAsXtPSLE

[UNZ]

yeah go for usb, firewire is a dead end.

[onecircles]

I got a juli@xte. It's PCIe, It sounds great, has really excellent frequency response compared to other cards I've worked with, especially on the low and, and can gain your signal quite a lot. It has balanced inputs and outputs, so running my electronic music through an xlr cable into the vocal channel of my amp has made a big difference in my signal to noise ratio and my overall tone. It can also route your drivers into each other, so I can run buzz through guitar rig if I want (which sounds awesome).

It's not my dream card though.