Janet:
Many PC manufacturers give you several options for sound cards.
The good news that'll eliminate lots of worry is that it is usually pretty
easy to take one card
out and put in a new one. So even if you eventually decide you don't like
the card you
originally selected, it isn't major work or expense to switch to a new
card). If there's aprticular software you plan to use, you can check with
the authors to determine which driver/card pairs they support. (Cool Edit,
Gold Wave, and the other well know programs supprt many.)
Making direct digital transfers from a dat recorder to a PC calls for a
sound card with SP/DIF
io or some other digital transfer specification. If you don't need to do
this, you can get by with considering the less than most expensive cards.
Most people I know (even if they're using a dat) transfer there sounds into
the computer by using the sound card to digitize analog input. The "noise"
that this process and your sound card adds to the final result is remarkabl=
e
small even for low priced cards (the cheaper soundblasters for example) and
you probably don't need to worry too much about it unless you've already
gone to lots of expense to get especially quite microphones and find
especially quiet places to record.
The one thing you should probably watch out for is machines with "built in"
sound in which the sound components are attached to something like the
motherboard and difficult to remove.
If you stick to the big name manufactures it won't be hard to get driver
upgrades (generally for free) if you decide to switch or upgrade operating
systems (lots of plug-and-play "windows" cards work --- are automatically
configured -- with the newer LINU distributions).
I was very happy with the approach I took to your problem: I originally
bought a mid-level (say $50) soundblaster compatible card and stuck with it
until I felt that it was restricting what I could do. Then I was going to
replace the card, but ended up replacing with whole PC, with the next level
card up (at a cost of say $80.).
There are several web-pages that present reviews of sound cards, and a
quick look at some of them will let you learn what the big names are, and
what the price ranges are.
And, as you indicated, a fast disk, lots of RAM (>256, or 512MB is nice),
and a CDR or RW (to save sounds off your hard disk) are improtant things to
look for as well.
Hope this helps, but be sure to look here for advice from much more expert
people.
Steve Pelikan
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
|