Updating my Home Studio

Hey guys.

For the moment I have an overall decent computer to mess around with my recordings - it got 2GHZ and 512 MbRam
The soundcard is an old SoundBlaster live (4 years old now).
I got a ADK mic (well thats all I could afford) a mic preamp (behringer - Tube ultragain MIC100) and of course myu guitar equipment (A boss GT-6 board, a behringer amp and my two guitars). When recording I get a somewhat decent sound qual but if I use my amp I get a buzzing sound.. Any ideas why? Second I would like to do two things. Get a mixer and update my soundcard. My budget is rather low though but I was thinking about buing an M-audio audiophile 2946 card - any comments on that? For the mixer I'm looking at the Soundcraft - Compact 4 (http://www.soundcraft.com/product_sheet.asp?product_id=121) Tell me what you think..

Thanks for reading and hopefully answering

I'd not bother with a mixer until you have many different sources to mix.

Get a nice sound card and if there's anything over a set of near-field flat response speakers.

Life is much easier when you can hear what you are doing. Not so many unpleasant surprises.

Will do. Thank you

If you can afford them the RME sound cards are nice.
I have one and really like it.

For speakers I use Alesis MI active MK IIs. Not the best but certainly not the worst available.

How about the creative audigy soundcard? Rumour has it it's a nice one, though I don't know how nice for recording. Maybe it's more oriented towards that whole dolby sorround thing, for watching movies or playing games. You might want to check em out.
Dr. Simon,
What is a near field....whatever, I've forgotten the exact words you used and I'm not cancelling the compose box to check it out. And what are the advantages of it over "normal" speakers? And you can get a bit technical (but not too much! :eek: ) if you want. I did physics in uni, so some things might sound strangely familiar. :D

Creative labs sound cards a for people who want to play computer games. There D/AC's have improved but are still week. The are not pre cards they are consumer cards. Don't take my word for it have a search through HR.com or even this forum to see what people have to say about them.

Near field speakers work by being very close to your ears. THis negates much of the rooms acoustics.

Flat response means that the speakers don't color the sound to artificially make it sound nice like stereo speakers. this is bad as when you get your mix right through the pare you are using it wont necessarily translate to another different pare of stereo speakers or a car audio system for example. Headphones are the same. They make everything sound nicer than it is and this can result in some very unpleasant surprises later on ! If you are very experienced it is posable to get away with mixing through headphones or stereo speakers however you have to know your kit very well and know what frequencies are distorted. It is even then sometimes very difficult to hear if something especially a vocal line or harmony is in tune. Always best to check it on a few different speaker system (like a car stereo, a boom box etc) before playing it to anyone.

I see. I thought it was something to do with the magnetism of the speakers and stuff like that.
On a different note;
The "new posts" button on the forum pages doesn't work well anymore. I always use it to search for new threads/posts since I last visited, so that I don't have to go thro' every forum individually. But lately, even after having been away for a while, I get very few posts when I search, and I got suspicious. This thread confirms it. It didn't come up, and I had to manually search for it, knowing the Doc or someone else must have replied.

That's odd I use it all the time !

Is your computer able to accept cookies and do you clear your cash regularly ?

It's always worked well, but since the latest upgrade is when it's started acting like this (or I've started to notice).
I surf from cyber cafes, so I can't really say much about settings and stuff.

Humm, I regularly use that function on a bunch of different computer and I generally don't have any trouble.

You might want to point this out to Jon in the GT site issues forum.

Jon may know a quick fix.