Recording 2 Tracks on PC: Need Sound Card Suggestions

[Pat M]

My son wants to record both voice and instruments on his computer. He has a mixer but it only records (on pc) one track for both. He needs two tracks.
Would two sound cards be able to do this? This is for a new pc that I'm buying so any suggestion what I need would be a big help.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

What about recording both seperately and then combining them later?

 

[Pat M]

This has been tried and he thinks he could get better results with a 2 track system.
Also he wants to pick up some accustics from the guitar as he drums on it. He plays a similar style as Justin King.

 

[robphy]

I'm not sure...
but are USB sound devices better (better isolated from the computer's noise?) than sound cards?

http://www.soundware.co.uk/pages/soundcards.php
has a discussion of possible "latency" issues.

Possibly useful:
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/26/234221

 

[B. Elliott]

A good quality sound card with an an excellent software bundle is the ASUS Xonar D2. If I didn't get such a good deal on my Creative X-Fi, it would have been my next sound card.

Lots of features... EMI shield, 7.1-channel, 118dB spec SNR, good cable bundle, digital and analog I/Os...

http://techgage.com/print/asus_xonar_d2_sound_card

Ableton Live is a music production tool that handles all stages of the production process, from recording to multitrack sequencing and arranging. The Live Lite Xonar edition has some of its features disabled, and can only record 64 simultaneous tracks, but retains most of the functionality necessary to produce high-quality multichannel recordings. Live Lite is also limited to two audio input channels and four audio output channels, as well as only two audio effects per track. While this obviously won't let you fully kit out a small recording studio, it's plenty useful for homemade recordings, and gives a taste of what's possible with modern DAWs.

In the past I've never really had a tendency to sway towards one company, but over the past few years ASUS has been turning out some high quality equipment at fair prices. I sometimes second guess purchasing the the X-Fi over the Xonar.