External Sound Card

[Senator Myth]

I have an inkling that there may have been a thread about this, but it was a REALLY long time ago. ANYWAY

So I don't have my normal laptop and have to steal time to use my family's desktop for things like posting on MLR and junk. A few days ago, though, I found myself listening to my music on this computer... And it sounded so different! This is a supermodern gaming computer, and so it was equipped with what is to my understanding a really great sound card.

I decided that maybe I wanted to get a good external sound card for music production. I was composing blind, it seemed. I discovered that the cheapest one also seemed to be a very similar, if not identical, sound card to the one my family's desktop. It seems almost too good to be true! It'd be this one.

http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Soundblaster-Surround-System-SB1095/dp/B0044DEDCA

Should I get this? And does anyone have any information, tips, or things they think I should know about external sound cards in general? I'm pretty sure Vaf does, but I don't have Skype or I'd just ask him directly ?~?

But he's probably not the only one who knows things about this anyway, so please share your wisdom with me in this thread!

[bartekko]

I don't see a reason why would USB-based soundcards be worse than pci-based ones.

Note: I don't know much about sound cards in general so I'm just sharing my thoughts.

[Versilaryan]

If you're going to get an external sound card, save up for a decent audio interface. From what I hear, external sound cards and audio interfaces do the exact same thing, except what we call audio interfaces tend to have more things geared towards musicians than standard external sound cards. EG, XLR microphone inputs, a quarter-inch output instead of an eighth-inch one, etc.

Bartekko: PCI-based ones are faster and have fewer latency issues, but if your PCI-based sound card is inside your computer where sound cards traditionally are, you can get some hum and electrical interference from the other stuff inside your computer. I know they do make external PCI sound cards, though.

[Senator Myth]

Unfortunately I won't be getting any more money until March, and I don't really have any reason to use those things you mentioned... At least not right now. I'll save up for that stuff in the future, but for right now I think I'm just going to go ahead and get this since thing since it's MUCH better than what I have right now, unless you think it's outright a BAD idea.