Do I Need a Souncard?

[Vince]

When I listen to audacity in record mode on my PC, I get a bunch of faint beeps, a bit like the ones here.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhBG1ilB3ao&t=1m18s[/youtube]

I've read somewhere that it's because modern PC makers don't bother with soundcards and everything goes through the sound chip on the motherboard.

TBH, the beeping is kind of annoying, even though it doesn't appear on the finished recording. There's a lot of activity on the monitors as well, it looks like something is being recorded even though nothing is going through the mikes.

Do I need a soundcard? What's a good one? Does it even matter if it's "a good one"? What do you guys do?

[jeremyb]

I have a m-audio fasttrack that I'm not using if you wanna buy it? $80 shipped to yo sweet ass

[jimi]

Used to be sound/modems/video etc were handled by dedicated hardware in your computer, but as PCs have grown in CPU power, lots of tasks are now handled by software instead, making PCs cheaper to produce. (LT Win modem / HSP Modem anyone?)

Generally if you have processing power to spare this shouldn't be a drama, the driver does the workload rather than passing the data to a dedicated hardware component.

Adding RAM or upgrading your CPU may be a cheaper alternative to adding a dedicated sound card. Making sure your have the correct and latest version of your driver is also important.

Last soundcard I bought was an SoundBlaster SBLive, but checking PBTech I can't see those available anymore. Infact I could only find one soundcard:
http://www.pbtech.co.nz/index.php?z=p&p ... 1-Channel-

[jeremyb]

The other thing to do is see if there are ASIO drivers for your existing soundcard, otherwise install ASIO4ALL as it fixes most issues and will improve your latency too

[Vince]

The other thing to do is see if there are ASIO drivers for your existing soundcard, otherwise install ASIO4ALL as it fixes most issues and will improve your latency too

ASIO? Sounds like spyware.

#stupidaussiejokes

[sirvill]

If you get an external Audio interface that has USB out, then you don't need a soundcard as the interface should do all the work for you.

[Vince]

install ASIO4ALL as it fixes most issues and will improve your latency too

Hmm... tried that and yes, there was a lot less crap on the display but the result wasn't much different. Thanks for the tip though.