Sound card dilemma

[Titotong]

Hi All

I have seen so many posts on which sound card to get and had finally decided upon a WaMi Rack 192L. I thought it had everything I needed: Pre-amps, 24/96, enough inputs/outputs, good latency(?), full support for XP, breakout box, midi, headphone socket etc etc (oh and it kinda looks nice!)

Then I started to see & read about mixers. I started looking at the Behringer range and they look pretty good. Now what I would really like to know is: As I will be recording vocals, guitar and bass - plus midi stuff - all with cubase - would it be best to buy something like an Audiophile 24/96, which get's great reviews but has no headphone monitoring connector, breakout box or pre-amps, and buy a pretty descent mixing desk?

Please, save me
It's driving me crazy! http://www.audioforums.com/forums/confused.gif

[1eyedbitch]

in general there's suppose to be a difference in the convertion quality betweeen the cards, but in my opinions it doesn't make that big of a difference in that price range (both the cards are for home recording not for studio use).
about the mixer and per-amp, well... if you're gonna get a behringer mixer the pre-amps will probably be around the same level of the wami-rack (although i never heard it, so ican't tell you for sure).
so if you buying a card+mixer won't improve your sound too much (it can also ends up giving worse results thana all-in-one sound-card).
the davantage of the wami-rack (or every other sound card with multi I/O) is the number of I/O that way you can record a few instruments simultaneously to different tracks, and send them out through different outputs.
as for the money, i think that you can get audiophile+behringer in less than the price of the wami-rack, but you are limiting your features.
if you ask me, i would go for the all-in-one sound card (actually i just did) and use it's features. in the future you can always buy one good pre-amp to improve your recording-chain.

[macouno]

I'd say it really depends on 1 thing only. Do you need to record multiple sources simultaneously but onto sepparate tracks? if so then go for a multi in/out card. if not then just go for a good stereo card.