Help!! pc versus dedicated DAW

[Thechief]

which is the better decision? get m-audio pci 192 soundcard(b-new) or the boss br600 which is being sold in the buysell forums here?? i have a p4 80gigdisk pc.. what are their individual advantages in terms of sound quality? how about if i record tracks in the br600 then transfer them to pc and do the magics on more powerful softwares? ..........thanks

[abyssinianson]

typically, transfers of audio files facilitates the loss of audio fidelity. so, in your case, recording on one machine with the M-Audio thing would be best since you keep your work "in-the-box."

[KitC]

The BR600 records only to 2 simultaneous tracks (it can playback 8 but record only 2 at a time). The 192 records to 2 tracks but can have an unlimited number of tracks depending on your DAW software and pc (remember, however, the PT M-Powered is limited to 48 audio tracks max).

The BR is limited to the size of the CF card included with it. The 192 will utilize whatever hard disk space you have (it's best to have at least 2 drives in a DAW.) In stock config, the BR600 comes with a 128 Mb CF card. A minute of mono wav recording at 44.1/16 comes to around 5 Mb of space; 8 tracks will take up 40 megs so that means 128 Mb CF card will only hold 3 mins of an 8 track recording (or roughly 24 track minutes at 44.1/16). The BR600 brochure shows the you can fit up to 65 total track minutes at MT2 settings. That means the BR is always set to use Roland's RDAC data compression algorithm (something similar to mp3 compression) - successive bounces within the unit will mean degraded audio quality.

[Thechief]

oki oki oki... the soundcard is winning here...  the br600 is sleek and portable, thats what tempts me..but my priority is the quality of recordings that i can get.. it seems that more could be done with the pc...hmmmm... thank you! that was a lot of help...