PC setup/Monitor Speakers Question

Hurlant Chamber

Active Member
Joined
Mar 19, 2015
Location
North West
Hi all,

Likely getting M-Audio AV42s for my PC setup. Up until now I've just been using my onboard soundcard with ASIO4ALL with decent headphones. Should I purchase an external DAC to run the monitors through or just plug them in directly? Cheers
 
it depends what you are doing, if you are using external synths or hardware, midi keyboard etc, or recording, then you want a "pro audio interface", which will give you low latency (the hardware/keyboard/etc wont lag behind the music)

onboard audio does the job if you don't have got any external stuff running into it, but as soon as you want to use a keyboard or midi controller, or anything else, you will have serious latency issues


a HIFI or consumer DAC wont necessarily give you low latency, so look for pro audio interfaces

if its a PC not a laptop, then a PCI or PCIe card is a good option, otherwise, USB, Firewire or Thunderbolt (depending on your laptop)
 
it depends what you are doing, if you are using external synths or hardware, midi keyboard etc, or recording, then you want a "pro audio interface", which will give you low latency (the hardware/keyboard/etc wont lag behind the music)

onboard audio does the job if you don't have got any external stuff running into it, but as soon as you want to use a keyboard or midi controller, or anything else, you will have serious latency issues


a HIFI or consumer DAC wont necessarily give you low latency, so look for pro audio interfaces

if its a PC not a laptop, then a PCI or PCIe card is a good option, otherwise, USB, Firewire or Thunderbolt (depending on your laptop)

Cheers - I'm mainly using onboard progs rather than anything external at this point. It's a PC tower so I'll look into PCI.
 
you could probably run with a 3.5mm to phono cable from your pc tower to the rca inputs on the monitors, at least until youve found a suitable soundcard.
as for a soundcard, get one with at least 2 TRS/XLR ins and 2 TRS/XLR outs (which is most of them), you can never have too many though. Its surprising how quickly a studio can scale up with some cheap analog gear and you'll run out of inputs very quickly! I'd go for a USB one personally, they dominate the lower end of the market, a focusrite starlett 2i2 would be a great start :)
 
you can pick up an Audiophile 2496 PCI card for peanuts these days, I've been running 2 for the last ~10years+, great cards, lower latency than pretty much any USB interface (although the win10 drivers are hit and miss - but there are plenty of other PCI options)

if you want to use the interface on a laptop aswell as PC, then USB/firewire is a good choice, otherwise you get better performance from PCI and PCIe
 
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