Recommend me a soundcard/audio card please

I’ll be having a new pc shortly but will still run it in Win XP with 4Gb RAM & Cubase 4.5
My old pc died.
My current soundcard (Pulsar 2 - 12 years old) may be dead too and I can’t afford to replace it with a Sonic Core X-ite box at around £2500.

So, what is a good soundcard for my needs?
I have a M-Audio 88es keyboard with midi out to a Kenton Control Freak Controller. This in turn is midi out to the midi in of my soundcard.
I also have a Korg NanoKontrol as a USB input (works like a dream with Spectrasonics).
I have a mini-mixer (preamped) to audio in of my existing soundcard and audio out to Spirit Folio mixer, then amp & Spirit Absolute 2 speakers. Headphones are on the folio mixer.
I would like to keep the same functionality, but I believe that some sound/audio cards now don’t have midi, but use USB. I’d prefer a midi in and out but I’m open to advice

Basically then I need audio in & out plus midi in.
I note that some cards have replaced midi with USB. Are these okay to use if I have a USB to midi converter in the chain?
I’m quite happy to spend £200-300 if needs be. Cheaper would be better but I don’t want to compromise workflow for the sake of a bit of money.
I’ve had a quick look on the net & seen RME ones, but these were 2007 and I’m really out of touch with current technology.
I’d appreciate your thoughts and advice please

(This is a shortened version of a much bigger, detailed post I made the other day.)

Thanks in advance

You can still buy Pulsar 2 on the 2cnd hand market, if you are used to the scope system I would recommend chasing one up as they are superb systems even today, you can try PlanetZ forums for stuff or here is an italian site selling lots of scope CREAMWARE in - Mercatino Musicale


Pulsar cards are 96/24, runs scope modular :slight_smile: and have lower latency than even modern cards, I’m looking for another 2*15 DSP cards for my system, giving me 36 DSP system, mainly for modular and the amazing softsynths.

http://sonic-core.net/joomla.soniccore/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=342&Itemid=274&lang=us

You get a few of these as standard with Scope 5.1 which is 64 Bit, scope 5.0 32 bit and both run on those older cards, the only thing is that the scope sts sampler does not run in 64 bit but that will be rectified shortly, there is still support for these ‘12’ year old cards :slight_smile:

Firstly I would check your existing card.

Thanks,
I’m well versed in Scope matters. I’ve been a Planet Z member for 12 years. They’re superb with Cubase & superb in their own right with the synths, effects, modular and so on.
But instead of buying another Pulsar II card though (even with more DSP’s) I intend to wait until I can afford an X-ite box in hopefully 12 months time.
If my existing card is dead, I want to just stick to VST’s & Cubase until I can afford Xite.

But thanks for responding quickly

A good plan, hopefully it isn’t dead because to tell the truth, even the latest and greatest cards don’t come near the pulsar unless you want to spend serious wonga.

If you want to spend a pittance maybe a MOTU 2408 Mk2 with 323 card on ebay. max 48/24 but decent with no latency recording with cuemix, you can pick that setup for less than £100 if you wait a bit.

It’s the serious Wonga I’m short of, hence the interim solution for 12 months

A Mk2 2408 gives you 8 analog ins/8 analog outs and 2 channels of adat for a pittance.