[B Gallagher]

Hello all,

I'm looking at getting an external Audio (sound card?) device? My knowledge of products in this area is very little. Here's what I'd like it to do.

Record guitar, vocals, or any other mic'ed input device, so that it sounds nice and clean. On my old PC system with the mic plugged straight into the PC's sound card there was always a lot of hissing on any recorded track. I don't want this - I'd just want the direct sound which came straight from the mic.

Also, I'm using Ableton Live, and am looking for something which allows me to have more that one output channel - so that I can set the default output to some speakers, and the "preview" output function to a pair of headphones.

Lastly, I'm looking and getting some sort of small MIDI keyboard (two octaves sort of thing). Aside from live recording input when I'm writing tracks, I'd also want to be able to use it in Ableton Live to trigger loops and so forth.

Can anyone suggest anything? I'm just starting out here, so I'm not looking for anything big and expensive and fancy - just something which does the job. Any suggestions anyone may have would be grealy appreciated.

Thanks.

[mattsgotredhair]

Not the best thing ever, but this will get done everything you've asked about.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Ozone/

Sweetwater is a good company to buy from too, but go where ever you're comfortable.

[wuzup101]

Check out www.m-audio.com - they are a quality company and might have what you're looking for. I'm not up on all of their specific products, so you'll have to browse a bit.

[analogika]

The ozone linked to above is from M-Audio.

FWIW, they make *excellent* value for money.