Question about converters.

[MWK]

could somebody please tell me the difference between a sound card and converters?

If converters are just the converters with out an interface (mic pre's and midi, etc) wouldn't it be better to just have stand alone converters if you intend to use other pre's which one almost certainly would rather than piling mic pre's on top of mic pre's?

and how is a stand alone converters hooked up as aposed to a traditional type sound card, fire wire or otherwise?


Thanks.

[davemc]

A lot of outboard convertor only card go firewire now. Some have PCI cards and a cable as well.
Some are adat/AES so you use digital as a way in.

It depends on your $'s what you go through.
Yes some soundcard you still go through the mic pre when you go in line input

[chris p]

... and it doesn't help when many music stores sell converters under a "sound card" heading.

A converter generally has the job of converting analog to digital and/or vice versa, although converters can also convert one digital format to another.

A sound card is (at least in strict terms) a converter on a card inside your PC somewhere.

The problem with sound cards (in the above sense) is twofold - one, the interface with the computer CPU depends on the internal bus architecture of the computer, and so accurate sample timing is usually a problem, and secondly the inside of a computer is RFI noisy, so you can get a lot of smearing of your signal. Thats why all professional and semi-pro converters are in stand-alone boxes that connect to your computer by firewire (or some other cable).

Basically, you do not want analog signals going into your computer. They should be digital before that stage.