What sound card

[Sugarmonster]

Now l am really getting into lmms l am finding the limitations of my on board sound chip (realtec) any one got a recommendation without breaking the bank, got spare pcie x4 slot and plenty of spare USB slots. Running a i3 550 and 8gb memory. Thanks. Getting totally befuddled by the mass of choice out there internal external £30 to £1000s think l find a good choice then find a review slagging them off.So let me know what you use in the real world with lmms.This rig is for lmms only so no game playing or 7.1 /5.1 surround required.

[slipstick]

I use a Focusrite Solo audio interface, USB, about £80. I like having a couple of decent quality inputs for microphone and instruments for recording in Audacity or other DAWs even if they're of no direct use with LMMS.

There are plenty of other similar interfaces at around that price and unless you're doing really serious work in a properly treated studio with first class reference monitors I'm not sure you need to spend much more. Probably the most popular are those by Behringer but after talking to a few professional sound engineers I gave those a miss.

Steve

[Sugarmonster]

Now l am really getting into lmms l am finding the limitations of my on board sound chip (realtec) any one got a recommendation without breaking the bank, got spare pcie x4 slot and plenty of spare USB slots. Running a i3 550 and 8gb memory. Thanks. Getting totally befuddled by the mass of choice out there internal external £30 to £1000s think l find a good choice then find a review slagging them off.So let me know what you use in the real world with lmms.This rig is for lmms only so no game playing or 7.1 /5.1 surround required.

Plus l run audacity, I am running on Win 10.

[mrlmmsguy]

What sort of limitations? Could you clarify please? It might just be your audio driver. My computer has similar specs and it runs LMMS just fine.

P.S. You can mix stuff into 5.1 manually in audacity, even my crappy, years old 200-dollars-when-it-was-brand-new computer could do that. I forget how, but it is possible, and I think you use a few mono tracks..

[Sugarmonster]

Suppose limitations was the wrong choice of word, more and more just recently l have been getting a awfull amount of crackling in my sound as if my speakers were on the way out ( but they are fine) if l play the track on another machine the crackle goes with it. So l guess it's my sound chip is causing it during the making of the track, even recordings using my guitar and audacity introduce lots of crackling, unless l set levels really low that it's bearly audible. tried various driver setups and no change. Everything has worked fine for the last six months clean clear sounds, just started crackling in the last couple of weeks, can a sound chip wearout? If so l think maybe mine has. Hence looking for new soundcard/ audio interface.

[brandystarbrite]

just recently l have been getting a awfull amount of crackling in my sound as if my speakers were on the way out ( but they are fine)

Crackling sounds?

In your Lmms Settings Menu, do you see any weird unicode symbols in the folder path.
eg * ^ % #

1) If you have any of those unicode type symbols etc. remove them. They are not supposed to be there.

2) And change your audio device to SDL.

3) Close Lmms, then restart Lmms so that the changes, will have effect.

Hope that helps and solves the problem.

[Sugarmonster]

Almost certainly my sound card, just installed a spare drive with totally clean install of windows and even windows sounds are distorted and crackling.
Thanks for assistance brandystarbrite l have no Unicode symbols and tried changing to SDL but if anything it made it worse so changed back. Now l know the problem is not specific to lmms think l will just disable onboard sound and treat myself to a focusrite scarlet.