From the original SynthMaker forum (2004–2014), with its members’ names and dates.
Nu Audio Science ·
I'm gonna invest in a new souncard my UA100 is looking a little long in the tooth 🙂 I have been looking at Edirol PCR1 £99 GBP and EMU 1616 £300 GBP Anybody had any experience of the PCR1 or EMU 1850 (The closest available at the moment to the 1616) I'm on laptops so my choice beyond these isn't that varied
Obviously i want a card that will work great with SM Perhaps a souncard comparison thread would be useful ?
EDIT* Audigy 2 ZS PCMCIA looks OK too £80 GBP
infuzion ·
NAS, what exactly are your requirements?
• USB, USB2, Firewire, &/or PC Card? • Sample frequency & depth (48kHz, 96, 192... I assume 24bit)? • number of Ins & outs • number of gutair &/or phantom-powered ins • connector types; 1/8", RCA, balanced outs? • other connectors: S/PDIF, MIDI In/Out/Thru, • other features (Zero-latency monitoring, 1-2 independent headphone connectors) • willing to have music keyboard/audio combo? • other uses of sound card (DJing, mastering, remote recording, on-board DSP effects/instruments) • Drivers: ASIO, ASIO2, Mac OS X &/or Linux? • price range
I'm looking for a laptop soundcard too. I've noticed you have to be careful about external sound cards that claim to have 24bit/96k; many can't handle that rate with all of their ins/outs going at once. Many MAudo's USB1 cards are like this; read specs carefully.
Right now, I just need something for basic field recording: stereo in & out, 24bit/96k, ASIO, & cheap. I'd love to have more features, but that will have to come later. So, this leaves me with M-Audio's Transit, & Soundblaster's PCMCIA card, review (though I'm not excited about eating up my only PCcard slot).
external sound review roundup more active forum
I'm holding off for a few weeks to see what Creative's new X-fi chip will bring. Some quotes: Imagine having the power of a second 3.4GHz processor (more than 10,000MIPS) built into your PC that was dedicated just to audio!
X-Fi's XtremeFidelity Engine provides a SRC so precise that even the highest quality DACs (rated at 118dB SNR) generate more noise! Delivering 100% transparent conversion at 135dB quality both up or down in resolution...
Tom's Hardware: Finally, for musical creation, beyond support for existing standards, X-Fi will see the emergence of a new standard - 3D MIDI - making it possible to create 3D multi-channel sound in MIDI as well as audio.
Gamespot: Creative's 24-bit "Crystalizer" allows the X-Fi chip to convert compressed 16-bit audio up to 24-bit quality. The crystalizer essentially repairs the highs, lows, and audio dynamics lost during the compression process to remaster the sound back to its original form.
extremetech: According to Creative, X-Fi employs Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) processing to individually examine the left and right audio signals of a stereo file in a similar manner to the human brain.... Creative isn't announcing any products based around the X-Fi today, but has stated that products will be on the market this fall. The performance chasm between X-Fi and the next best audio accelerator, Creative's own 10K2.5 is huge—the X-Fi has roughly 24X the MIPS of the 10K2.5. Motherboard solutions and cards based on Via's Envy 24 audio controller have no DSP in them at all.
Nu Audio Science ·
Isn't XFi not due into full production until Jan 06 ? I expect it will be months after its first release before any PCMCIA version aswell 🙁 I need something now that ideally i can carry around with me, This is where the PCR1 is the winner at the moment for me, I could carry around a controller and IO all in one and its very small, The Soundblaster is cheaper but i cannot find any info regarding the 10k on the PCMCIA if at all it has one, If it does have one then i must admit i would probably go straight out and buy that just to have 64 voice SF2 in hardware on my laptop (I created a plugin using custom modules by Dhaupt that would allow you to control the SF2 part of a soundblaster fully, Even loading and organising SF2s 🙂 )
Price isn't of great importance to me that is why i'm keeping my eye on the 1616 from EMU, This would allow me to run my MS Pinky setup plugin my mics and still have plenty of IO left over, The FX get a bad rep but i make Hiphop so i would probably like them 🙂 The only drawback with the EMU is the reliability of its ASIO drivers and conflicts with certain chipsets (I believe non of these problems are relevant on Centrinos with the 1616 and that is what i am running)
24 96 isn't that important to me either (I still love the sound of my 8 bit Amiga)
infuzion ·
Nu Audio Science wrote: Isn't XFi not due into full production until Jan 06 ?
One of the sources above say a fall release for some cards.
Price isn't of great importance to me that is why i'm keeping my eye on the 1616 from EMU, This would allow me to run my MS Pinky setup plugin my mics and still have plenty of IO left over,
Yea, I want to do Pinky or similar also. ASIO would help here if the software supports it.
24 96 isn't that important to me either (I still love the sound of my 8 bit Amiga)
My C64 woops Amiga's sound by far! 😉 I still have an A4000 collecting dust, but I miss Bars & Pipes. SM is like a hyper B&P. I keep my Korg DSS-1 for that retro rave sound.
ProSynth ·
I'd wait for the new Creative audio and use onboard audio for now. Bar&Pipes was bought out by Microsoft and promptly discontinued. What agreat program that was. Still is.
infuzion ·
ProSynth wrote: I'd wait for the new Creative audio and use onboard audio for now.
Agreed. If you don't care about quality, then even if you don't buy X-fi based card, just the existance of that chip should force other cards' prices down (if someone can program it's DSP to run VSTis).
Bar&Pipes was bought out by Microsoft and promptly discontinued. What agreat program that was. Still is.
You know, I always imagined Microsoft bought out Blue Ribbon to have their programmers work on the audio/MIDI part of DirectX.
Nu Audio Science ·
No MS bought B+P specifically to kill the Amiga market, They did it with a hell of a lot of stuff, Buy it and release it for free, They tried to buy up anything that was selling well on the Amiga but always released it for free ?
Theres no way im sticking to onboard sound either, SM stuff wont play properly and Tracktion bails with A4A, I need to get something, I think i'll get the PCR 1 and the sounblaster PCMCIA.
infuzion ·
Nu Audio Science wrote: Theres no way im sticking to onboard sound either, SM stuff wont play properly and Tracktion bails with A4A, I need to get something, I think i'll get the PCR 1 and the sounblaster PCMCIA.
cool. Please let us know how it turns out when you buy them; quality, stability, & CPU usage. cheers
Nu Audio Science ·
No worries dude 🙂
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