Need help with soundcards Options

Hi everyone. I am new to the site and I am so glad I found it. Anyway I’ll get to the point. I have a G4/867 with 1.25GB of RAM and I’m ready to get it set up for music production. The first thing I want to do is put a soundcard in it. Can I just get some opinions on what is really good and compatible with my G4. I obviously would like 24 bit sound and so on. I have been thinking about the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card. Please, I have never used a Mac for this before and I can’t wait to get started. I have wanted a G4 forever and now I have one and I’m ready to get going. hanks in advance.

I tried one of those in my G4/400 and it was terrible, but new versions of the drivers could change that to excellent and I wouldn't be surprised.

Do you know what software you're going to be using? What will you be doing?

Answers to those questions will get you much better replies.

I will be using ProTools and Reason. The kind of music  I will be doing will be old analog and some digital sounding electronic spacey music. Much like Klaus Schulze so there will be many high and low frequencies that I want to be crystal clear. But I still would like some general feedback about waht some of you guys are already using for a sound card. Thanks again.

[Synthetic]

Well I am running ProTools LE 5.1 on a g3 350mhz with a Digi001 interface for the sound card. This works well for me but there are limitations. First, Reason does not like the sound drivers that the Digi001 uses in conjunction with sound manager but will work... just sounds nasty until you bounce song to disk and it sounds fine. Second... Apple DVD does not like the Digi001 drivers either and so I can't listen to DVD's using the Digi001 monitor outputs. There are a couple of other apps like Live and few others that don't like the Digi001 drivers either. I am considering buying another sound card just for using with other apps other than ProTools LE.

The M-Audio cards seem to be the most popular and best deal going right now according to my sales rep at Sweetwater. I suggest working up a list of software that you think you might use and then contact someone at Sweetwater.com and tell them you want a sound card that is compatible with your list of software. Sweetwater has best customer service and won't steer you into a something just to make a sale. They might not be the cheapest place to shop but the service and customer support makes up for it.

Hey thanks so much for that response. I think I will give them a call.