Skip to main content ↑ ↓
Topic: More than one Sound Card (Read 5127 times) previous topic - next topic

More than one Sound Card

Is it possible to have more than one sound card working on the same computer? I am thinking about getting a new pc and would like to have a Yamaha sound card installed. Is it possible to have a soundblaster as well and go back and forth?

Re: More than one Sound Card

Reply #1 –
G'day Fitz,

Quote from: fitzclan –
Is it possible to have more than one sound card working on the same computer? I am thinking about getting a new pc and would like to have a Yamaha sound card installed. Is it possible to have a soundblaster as well and go back and forth?

I haven't deliberately done it but I can't see why not...  About the only thing I can imagine being a difficulty might be the mixer...  Like which line in was that...?  :)

Which Yamaha sound card did you have in mind?  And why not use it for everything?  Are you wanting to use soundfonts as well as the Yamaha synth (assuming the Yam. doesn't support soundfonts) ?

More questions than answers - good one Lawrie ;)
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: More than one Sound Card

Reply #2 –
Hi Lawrie,
I didn't even consider the line in/out thing. I guess that would be a problem to contend with. I think the hard line would be OK, but the virtual might cause some difficulty. My reasoning is that when I write on the computer, I would like to know how things will sound when played on the keyboard since the sounds don't always match. I know that you have had this problem yourself with renderings from different sound cards, ( I'm thinking of the "clap" instead of "pounding bass drum" in "Hangin' on a Tree" which doesn't work at all). While the keyboard generally has better sounds, it is not always true. What is written on the pc doesn't always translate into better sound on the keyboard as the midi instrument channels do not always match. (I'm speaking of using the keyboard to play the song via floppy disk). If the sound cards matched or had the same sounds on the same channels, the renderings would be closer. I suppose that it would be easier just to have the Yamaha and use it for everything. Just wondering though. About which particular sound card, I'm not sure. I'm trying to talk our music committee at church into purchasing a Yamaha PSR 3000. It would be nice to get the same card that is  installed in that machine if that is possible. I don't know. Any suggestions?

Re: More than one Sound Card

Reply #3 –
G'day Fitz,
just had a quick read about the PSR3000 - sounds impressive...

If your main requirement is to try and match sounds with a keyboard you might be a little out of luck - not all keyboards support the full GM spec (especially cheap ones) and not all sound cards do either :(

However, if you have a Yamaha keyboard with XG sounds then you should be able to get a close match by locating a copy of the Yamaha S-YXG50 softsynth.  (I reckon the PSR3000 is probably a superset of this synth)

This way you only need one sound card too!
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: More than one Sound Card

Reply #4 –
(Umless you write for saxes)!!!

Re: More than one Sound Card

Reply #5 –
Why Barry, I'm not prejudice, I write for both saxes! I take it you're not impressed with the Yamaha sex synth.

Re: More than one Sound Card

Reply #6 –
What's really fun is to use the MIDI capabilities of two sound cards simultaneously, e.g. a few systems playback through Microsoft Wavetable Synth (Roland) and a few systems playback via on-card hardware or software synth. Now we can talk about latency...

I've used double sound cards for a few years, and NWC has no problems neither in using the Windows default settings or any other MIDI output source I want, even several at a time as described above. The only software I had problems with was WinAMP 5 which for a while locked up when I had two sound cards enabled. It seems to have been fixed in more recent versions. Currently I have a SB Live! and some integrated sound from Realtek that I barely don't use anyway.