Cubase 4 LE w/external sound card

[rccolwell]

I'm thinking about using a Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi HD external sound card with Cubase 4 LE and was wondering if anyone has any input about this combination. I've thought about using this with my Lenovo T-61 laptop running Windows 7. The Lenovo has integrated SoundMAX Integrated Digitil HD Audio and I don't know how well it would work with 4 LE and the Lexicon Omega. I'd appreciate any input anyone has.

[celtsound]

There is no reason that LE4 will not work with any soundcard, providing you have the correct ASIO drivers.

What you do need to know is that Cubase will use only one ASIO driver at a time, eg if you're using the Omega driver, you can't route Cubase audio through the onboard soundcard and vice versa.

You can use 3rd party drivers such as Asio4all (google this) to drive multiple audio devices but it can be a little hit and miss.

If you don't mind my asking, I'm curious to know why you want to run an external Soundblaster card as well as the Omega in Cubase.

[rccolwell]

The Lexicon Omega is the hardware that I have to handle instrument and micorphone inputs. Cubase LE 4 came with the Lexicon Omega. I haven't set up the system yet so I don't know if I would be interested in using the external card...just "bench racing". It seems that the onboard or outboard sound card would only come into play when listening to the finished product through the computer's speakers which would be pretty low-fi anyway. I plan to use the Omega with a vocal microphone, electric guitar playing through effects, acoustic-electric guitar playing through the preamp section of a Marshall ASR50, and occasionally another acoustic guitar through an external microphone. Not all at the same time .

[froggie]

Hello, Celtsound is right, the Omega uses ASIO drivers and when plugged in, takes over the production/reproduction of sound on the pc and I think it's best used that way. Your Soundblaster card almost certainly uses standard MME windows drivers, so it would be difficult or even impossible to use the two sound devices at the same time. Cubase LE is an OEM product and so might not want to work with anything else than the Omega. If you want to use speakers, just plug your amp into the output of the Omega and forget the other sound devices.

[celtsound]

the Omega ...takes over the production/reproduction of sound on the pc and I think it's best used that way.

The Omega will only take over input and output of the sound ONLY if you tell it to in Control panel.

Your Soundblaster card almost certainly uses standard MME windows drivers, so it would be difficult or even impossible to use the two sound devices at the same time. Cubase LE is an OEM product and so might not want to work with anything else than the Omega.

As long as you have an ASIO compliant driver for your hardware, Cubase can use it. And if you use ASIO4all you can address multiple outputs.

[froggie]

I stand corrected, it only takes over when used with Cubase. My doubt as to the flexibility of LE versions of DAWs comes from my experiments at using my Omega with a rival DAW bundled with a usb microphone that uses MME drivers only and so far, although the omega appears in the list of drivers, it won't show as ASIO and doesn't work. I conduct these experiments out of interest only, as Cubase gives me access to the excellent Pantheon reverb plug-in.