the MSI 845pe Max FIR motherboard as i understand, has on-board firewire connections and on-board audio card. someone on the xpress dv forum said he is running xpress dv on this board very smoothly.

i'm about to purchase a pc for editing with xpress dv. i was intending on getting an ASUS P4B533 845E board, an ADS PYRO firewire capture card and a CREATIVE SOUNDBLASTER LIVE! for audio.

my question is: if i get the above mentioned MSI board, will it's on-board features sufficiently replace the ADS PYRO and soundblaster cards?

(i tried asking the guy who posted the thread on the avid board, but he hasn't answered, thought you guys might be able to help)

thanks, once again.

Anytime you purchase on-board capabilities, you limit yourself. If you are serious about sound, you will not want any sound system where the analog signals enter the computer cabinet.

I've never heard of the MSI but I have used and do use ASUS with great success. I'm running one of their Motherboards on this computer right now. It never crashes.

I'm just not a fan of on-board add-ons. I had to give away a very expensive dual processor board because the on-board SCSI controller fouled up the system even when turned off.

thanks for the advice mike

Not sure what software you will be using, some of the capture software is picky about the 1394 chipset used, TI 1394 seems to be the better one. I would suggest you skip the SB Live and go for an Audigy or Audigy2, SBLive was a bit of a CPU and PCI hog (all being relative that is). The Audigy has better soudn quality and has 1394 on it and the OEM card can be found for under $75. I use VV4 and have aptured from the 1394 on the Audigy and the 1394 on my ATI 8500DV. Sonic Foundry loves the AD Pyro, but like I said I have captured from my Audigy and ATI card. The MSI site says: - 1394 port controlled by VT6306 (Optional)
This sounds like a VIA chip set, I woudl say try it and if it works fine, otherwise try the audigy, you still have not wasted a slot, then if all else fails get the ADS. I actually took my ADS out to free a slot because I have not had any problems with the others. Sonic Foundry does say they have lots of problems with Adaptec 1394 cards.

will be running avid xpress dv 3.5

so lets see, following some research, these are the specs i have down so far:

INTEL P4 2.4GHz 533MHz
ASUS P4B533 845E
512 MUSHKIN PC2100 DDR RAM
MATROX G550
CREATIVE SOUNDBLASTER AUDIGY WITH 1394
a system hard drive (40GB) and an editing drive (120GB), a case, 350 watt power supply and a CD burner.

does anyone think i should make changes?

If you are going to want the cleanest audio, I'd not go with a card that plugs into the computer.

I'd get a USB-connected box where all of the analog signals are kept outside the computer. Plenty of those are now available.

The list looks good, get the 845PE based board, not the E, the PE supports PC2700 DDR and has gotten great reviews, as being one of Intels most refined chipsets since the 440BX. I have the ASUS P4PE and it is loaded and very nice, I do nto ahve the one with the 1394 though. Then get PC2700 DDR RAM and make sure the RAM has a CL2.0, you can use CL2.5 which is cheaper but you will have a 2-5% performance drop, but considering you would be going from PC2100 to PC2700 you would be going up in performance anyway. I buy my hardware form www.newegg.com which has great prices and I just got the P4PE for around $112 then I got 2 x 256MB PC2700 CL2.5 from Crucial for $40 each.

mike, i'm not sure i understand what a usb-connected box is. clean sound is very important to me. can you list a few examples of such boxes, so that i can read about them?

on the various forums, i've read most people going with the sounblaster cards: live! or the audigy cards. are these cards that plug into your computer?

and thanks keith, i'll look into the PC2700 DDR RAM and the ASUS 845PE board.

Adi,

If all you are going to do is capture from mini-DV and edit and then republish to tape or to DVD, I don;t see the advantage of a external USB connected sound box, the Audigy 2 has excellent sound quality and unless you are going top be capturing seperate sound or somehting I think the USB connceted box is over kill.

what is the difference between the audigy and the audigy 2?

Audigy was very noticably ceaner sound than a SBLive, the Audgy 2 over the Auidgy is less subtle, there is slightly better s/n ration and I believe the Audigy2 finally can record 24-bit, the Audgy said 24-bit, but I beeliove it only processed 24-bit internally and output was really 16-bit or something. Either Audgy is good, if you have the bucks go Audigy 2, I still only have Audigy in my gaming and then my video system, I suspect I will get one Audugy 2 next month.

ok. thanks.

The minute you think the external box is overkill, you will need to do some video with a very quiet background. Then the internal card will kill you.

http://www.national-tech.com/specs/40us-12000.htm output only sound adapter.

http://www.usbgear.com/item_53.html in and out

http://www.everythingusb.com/search/?keywords=audio quite a few USB audio solutions.

They range in price from about $40 to high, depending on the number of channels you want.

mike, can you please explain to me what exactly an external box is and what it does. i'm a little confused.
with an external box, do i not need a sound card? is it actually a sound card that doen't plug into the motherboard inside the computer case, but plugs in from the outside somehow?
do you know where i can read a little about external boxes and without too much knowledge about computers and sound technology, understand what is going on?
also, i haven't read about any of these being used with xpress dv. are there any issues on compatability?
thanks.

An external box has the external audio connections on it and analog to digital and digital to analog converters inside. The only audio that goes into or out of the computer is digital which is highly resistant to noise.

The external boxes range from $40 boxes with a stereo pair of inputs and outputs to high-end multi-channel mixers.

I don't know about xpress dv. Since it has a dv connection, I don't know why it would need an audio connection except for monitoring purposes. Audio is entrained in the digital video stream in DV so you shouldn't be worried about audio in that respect.

When you want to bring multiple channels in from microphones (a recording session) or capture audio from a recorder, then the audio board or box is used. The external box has a better chance of avoiding noise generated by the computer circuitry because everything is external to the computer box.

Can you get away with an internal card? Certainly. I've been using one for years but as I start to chase down low-level noise in my audio, I'm starting to suspect the inboard card is contributing.

A good place to look for information on these devices is the pro sound magazines and web sites. Keyboard and EQ are a couple that come to mind. Musiciansfriend is a web site that has a fair amount of equipment. Many others out there. May be one of the sponsers of this board carries these.

Hope this helps. Keep your head down over there.

thanks for your help mike. i'll look into it. guess it's back to the drawing board. it never ends. i'm anxious to just go out and buy, but after spending most of what i've saved up on a new pd150, i really can't afford to find out i bought a useless, or not good enough, piece of hardware.

quiet so far, in my neighborhood.

thanks again,

adi

Good luck.

When the AVID software was first introduced, BTW, there was a very restricted set of hardware that was approved. I assume you've checked their web site for approved hardware.

http://support01.avid.com/support/AvidMain.nsf/QualificationR3?ReadForm is the location of AVID's Express DV information on this.

yeah i read their list of approved hardware. but i'm not sure i'll go exactly according to what they suggest and rely on forums for support. from what i've heard, their support isn't always that hot anyway.

regarding the usb external box you suggested, i did some research and found the SOUNBLASTER EXTIGY to be a nice card for me, but then on a message board got the following post:

< < < The biggest problem with them (external sound cards) is that they're given a lower priority than the PCI ports inside the computer, meaning there can be a delay in sound processing or, sometimes, breaks and hiccups in the sound playback. > > >

what do you think?

I still vote for a PCI card UNLESS you are going to capture audio from your sound card, a DV capture does not occur through the sound card, so unless you are capturing through the card or mixing out from the card then I would stick with PCI card.