[Dream] Cheap soundcard recommendations?

[Mark]

On 3/22/07, UnderTow put forth:
>On Wed, 14 Mar 2007, Mark wrote:
>  > Well, not knowing anything else about these devices, I would choose
>  > something that is in in a separate chassis that has its own power
>  > supply.  I don't like soundcards.  They are fine for recreational
>  > use, but imho, it is not cost effective for a manufacturer to get
>  > analogue circuitry to work well in such an environment.  What do PC
>  > power supplies produce??  A 12V supply for motors and such and 5V at
>  > upwards of 30A driving a bunch of noisy ass logic.  You want
>  > something you are actually going to hear connected to that??
>
>In theory you might be right but one of the best sound cards available has
>all the circuitry inside the computer yet manages not to keep out
>interference from other devices inside the PC. (Lynx cards).

I'm also right in practice :)

Afaik, not only are Lynx cards rather expensive (~$500 for only two
channels), but their cards that do have AD converters do not have
analogue gain stages, such as instrument or mic pre-amps.  Why??
Because because bringing low level signals inside a PC is very bad
idea.  So not only do they do much less work in the analogue domain,
their performance depends on receiving a hot balanced signal.  Unless
Andrei is only going to record balanced line level signals that are
already around +20db, then a Lynx card would be an extremely poor
choice, as the output of most synthesizers is way lower than that.
He would need a mixer or channel strips in order to use a Lynx card,
and even then he still might be better off with an external audio
interface for the same money.

Also, while I'm typing, another advantage to external audio
interfaces is ergonomics.  In addition to physical accessibility,
many have handy features just as level knobs, meters, headphone amps,
etc.  Having something as simple as a knob to turn down the monitors
can be a real convenience.