Sound card helps for editing?

Darwin Eine

New member
Hello!
I was going to build entry level FL studio workstation for personal use only. I'd like to know if whether it is better to spend on
a non-expensive sound card like Creative sound blaster 5.1 VX or Asus Xonar DGX; or to extend RAM from 8GB to 16GB.

Will any of these sound cards make any difference at all, given that there's already onboard realtek ALC892 codec available?
 
Not sure what kind of difference you're looking for, but safe to say those you mentioned aren't gonna do much anything at all.
 
If you took your car to a shop and they just said "well now it's better" and charged you $500, wouldn't you want to know what exactly did they do? Just saying that randomly considering buying something because it's supposed to "improve" something is...well, not a good idea.

That said, a good audio interface (those you mentioned are more like general purpose/gaming/movie type units) can improve the following: 1) you get a bunch of physical inputs and outputs for connection various pieces of gear, like synths and guitars, MIDI keyboards (although most modern MIDI units connect via USB), microphones (they often also include microphones preamps and phantom power), fx processors, monitor speakers and whatnot; 2) the latency performance is likely to improve compared to your built-in soundcard (the Realtek); 3) the analog to digital (A/D) and digital to analog (D/A) converters are probably a bit better, again compared to your built-in unit.

But "real" interfaces tend to cost a bit more than those Creative & Asus devices, so if the choice is between those and upgrading your RAM, I'd go with 16Gbs of RAM.
 
Those consumer grade soundcards aren't meant for making music. They have features for home theater, surround use.... they're totally not suited for making music.
They're not gonna be better than the on-board Realtek chip, which isn't great. But if you're just starting off (and don't want to record your own instruments and vocals) it'll do if you install Asio4all drivers.
They're free and make it bit more suited for music production.

Eventually though, your audio interface and speakers will be the first major upgrades you'll want to make. Because without those you don't really have a clear picture of what your music actually sounds like...
and it's probably gonna sound bad on other systems! That's not just important, it's essential and unfortunately quality has a price.. so it makes sense you don't want to do that right after buying a new workstation.
Just focus on getting the best computer you can now and don't worry about the audio until the next time you have like 500-600 (dollar/euro) to spend. In the meantime read up on audio-interface and monitor-speakers like,
what types there, what they're for and how much they cost.. that last part will be depressing, fair warning ;)
 
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