M-Audio Delta 1010 LT - sound card DELTA 1010-LT DELTA 1010LT

I purchased this card to listen to the audio on my video computer because motherboard soundcards are weak. This is clearly a step up from a motherboard soundcard, is very versitile. That being said it is nowhere close to an Apogee Rosetta AD/DA converter. But for 1/30th of the cost, you can't go wrong. For listening to tunes or simple recording, it is a good unit.

I like the fact that it runs on Win98SE, WinXP home, and Ubuntu Linux. Also, it's got ASIO and WDM. The input level can be jumper-set on the hardware for consumer, semi-pro, or pro. The hardware patchbay is a great tool. Latency is as close to zero as you can get so that multi-tracking works properly and you don't need a time track. You've got several choices for clock. XLR Mic (or line) inputs on I1/I2, so you can bypass your mixing board, but if you're recording drums with mics (5 or 7 mics for drums) you need your mixing board, then you can sub them out to the line-ins (I3-I8), and with two other mics directly in to I1 and I2, you've got 8 mics for drums. It can do at least 96kbs (can't remember if it does 192kbs, but 192 would take a lot of storage and you'd need a pretty fast system. It does not have a headphone jack, so you'll need to monitor through the outputs sent to a mixer or send your output to your original sound card. A lot of software can use this card -- including old software like Soundforge 6 and Cool Edit Pro 2.1. I like it.