DV audio - does the card matter?

Tattoo wrote on 9/27/2005, 11:28 AM
Building a new computer and was thinking about delaying buying a real audio card. Using the motherboard audio will work fine for day to day stuff, but I was wondering if it would affect video editing.

Since the audio comes in digitally via Firewire, does it go through the audio card at all? If not, then the card wouldn't matter for DV editing, right?

Brian

Comments

jetdv wrote on 9/27/2005, 11:32 AM
The only place the audio card would come into affect would be your listening to and adjusting the audio while editing. As for the capture/PTT, you are correct that the audio card will not come into play.
busterkeaton wrote on 9/27/2005, 1:59 PM
You can edit DV using motherboard audio, but I think you will find having a better audio card and better speakers more pleasing and easier to work with than regular computer spearkers and sound card.

If you do professional work or hope to, your mixes will be better when you can accurately hear what is going on. You don't want to make a video and then have someone play it on their big surround system and hear noises you couldn't hear when you edited the piece.

M-audio makes really good audio cards. They have a professional line for recording and mixing and a consumer line. The consumer card, the Revolution, can be found for around $75 for the 5.1 version. It's a really nice card, you can definitely hear the difference. That card is the minium I would put in an editing system. Even for a hobbyist, it's worth the money.

If you want to record voiceovers and stuff like that I probably would go higher.

Tattoo wrote on 9/28/2005, 1:01 PM
Buster,

I appreciate the advice. I'll be doing exactly that, but nice to know I can kick that can down the road a couple months if I have to. I'd rather wait for a little to get what I want than settle in the short term.

I've been thinking about the Echo Gina3G, but read a thread here that mentioned some conflicts with different chipsets. Now I'm back on the search. Any recommendations in the $200 area? I could go up to $400, but would prefer not to.

The M-audio 1010LT looks to fit the bill, except it doesn't appear to have any headphone output. Highly desired, but not required.