LunarG wrote:For most people, the speakers (or headphones) will always be the weakest link.
The distortion and frequency response problems with *any* headphone, or speaker (and room if we're talking speaker), even at the hilariously expensive ultra high end will be many orders of magnitude worse than any modern soundcard (which are usually very hard to pick apart without measurement). I do agree that it's kind of silly when you see those setups with $5 PC speakers and a $250 soundcard and the user insisting "and I can tell the difference between 319kbit and 320kbit mp3s too!" 😵
As far as headphones - I'm not sure what your experience is with headphones, but there are some very good examples out there, which can rival the best speakers in many ways. Still doesn't mean that the user gains super-human ability to pick apart differences that exist below the threshold of amplifier, output transducer, human perception, etc. 😊
I would disagree with tone controls, EQ, etc being the end of the world - especially for speakers, where they can usually help things out quite a bit in terms of "fixing" response for the room. Of course that's only recently that I'd say this; old-school "insert" processors and EQs tended to bring a lot of noise and garbage into the mix, but modern digital gear usually just does what it's supposed to do and is otherwise inaudible.
100% agree with different tastes for different folks as well. 😀
LunarG wrote:
I'm pretty sure that most semi-pro sound cards with ASIO drivers can sort things like recording from multiple inputs at the same time mostly in hardware, disregarding what limitations Windows might impose. I haven't actually tried doing recently, but I'm almost 100% certain that my DMX 6Fire USB can record multiple inputs at the same time.
It depends on how "multiple inputs" is defined, and what application is using ASIO (ASIO is not an end in and of itself, it's an I/O protocol to pass data between an audio interface and a target application). Most DAW applications will accept up to whatever the single-device input limit is, so if your interface will do four inputs, you get four inputs in the DAW. Some DAW applications will accept "ganged" or multiple device input, so if you have device A doing four inputs and add device B for another two inputs, you can now record six inputs assuming the drivers of the two devices play nice (and don't impose some stupid licence restriction (I'm looking at you, M-Audio)).
Dreamer_of_the_past wrote:Get Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD + Corsair SP2500 and feel the difference.
I remember hearing a lot about those speakers before they came out, and now it seems like they've vanished. Any impressions in real-world use?