Sound Blaster

[geraint]

I have been using Van Basco as my player for some time now, going from my laptop into an external Creative usb Sound Blaster sound card and then to my amp. All worked beautifully.
I also use this card and programme for all my studio recording work .
My laptop recently went to meet the recycling man, and I have had to buy a new one.
I have been trying to re-establish my old set up, but to my horror, now I find that the Sound Blaster and the creative music source is not compatible with windows vista.

Any suggestions on similar products which are Vista compatible greatly appreciated.

[freeway]

Purchased the SB Audigy card last week albeit internal but it works perfect with Vista.......cheap too about 25 quid...Cheerz

[JazzCat]

Vista has been the nemesis of musicians since it came out. I have a friend right now who's had enough, is wiping his drive and going back to XP.
If I get a laptop for myself it will not have Vista, no way, no how. LOL.

[Emerald Midi]

Aug 19, 2008 2:24:24 GMT JazzCat said:

Vista has been the nemesis of musicians since it came out. I have a friend right now who's had enough, is wiping his drive and going back to XP.
If I get a laptop for myself it will not have Vista, no way, no how. LOL.

Interesting.

I am using Visa Home Premium and although I did initially experience compatibility issues these have all since been resolved to my satisfaction.

[geraint]

Thanks for the comments. I think that your friend may have problems getting rid of the Vista and changing bit back to XP, I tried that and it just wont do it.

[jford]

You can get decent sound cards for desktops under Vista, but laptops are a whole different story. I went through my own ordeal with a Dell laptop that I eventually returned for a full refund.

If you get a desktop, and you want a Creative card for soundfont support, be sure to get at least the X-FI Xtreme Gamer. Do not get the X-Fi XTreme Audio (it's not a true X-Fi and it won't give you soundfont support). The Gamer works nicely with Vista (or XP - my system is a dual boot).

But for a laptop, you may have to look at USB externals. I would stay away from laptops that use the Sigmatel chips (Dell does) - it just recently began to support "what-u-hear" or "stereo mix" in the driver and it does not support line input monitoring. I think the systems with RealTek chips fare better for Vista laptops (but many of them don't have stereo line-in, just a mono mic-in). Be sure to read the specs carefully. Also, Vista handles sound very differently than XP. The interface isn't even close, so be sure to do some web searching and get it straight before taking the plunge. If you have a legal copy of XP and can use it, you may want to think about downgrading even if the new system came with Vista (I would use an imaging program first to make a backup copy of the disk, just for the future when XP isn't supported any longer).

My US $0.02 worth (which isn't worth very much at all, actually).

[jford]

Aug 19, 2008 15:21:33 GMT geraint said:

Thanks for the comments. I think that your friend may have problems getting rid of the Vista and changing bit back to XP, I tried that and it just wont do it.

Depending on your machine, you should check their user forums for how to retrograde to XP. HP has a great site with a lot of folks willing to point out which drivers you need and where to download them and what order to install them. With that help, I had no problems at all installing XP on my new machine.

One thing that trips a lot of people up is that a lot of new machines use SATA drives, but XP did not include SATA drivers on their installation disks. So you end up having to get a copy of the drivers and slipstream your installation disk (or have them available via a USB stick) to make the installation work. NLite (you can do a web search) is the program many use to create a slipstream disk and there's lots of info on how to use it on the web.

Hope that helps a little.

[geraint]

Again thank you for your comments and advice, all greatly appreciated, my knowledge on such matters is very limited, and it is nice to have others to turn to for advice.