Sound card
Chris, Dean.
If only 2 channels are needed this looks like a contender. Same specs as the 1820M but less than ½ the price. Fully balanced I/O and lots of other good stuff.
Roger
http://www.zzounds.com/item--EMU1212M
Chris, Dean.
If only 2 channels are needed this looks like a contender. Same specs as the 1820M but less than ½ the price. Fully balanced I/O and lots of other good stuff.
Roger
http://www.zzounds.com/item--EMU1212M
Sure, but just imagine the burning sensation if you buy that and a few months later WMD drivers now support all 8 channels.
Ooooooooh I'd be mad!
They're supposed to offer full support for it in the near future, I'll be bugging them myself and I fully encourage anyone else interesting in a full 8 channels of this caliber to hassle them as well!
For now the two channels will suit me fine though.
Thanks for the tip about VLC, I'll check it out.
Cheers
Ooooooooh I'd be mad!
They're supposed to offer full support for it in the near future, I'll be bugging them myself and I fully encourage anyone else interesting in a full 8 channels of this caliber to hassle them as well!
For now the two channels will suit me fine though.
Thanks for the tip about VLC, I'll check it out.
Cheers
deandob said:
Hi Dean,
Do you have a link to any litterature where it say's it has support for it? I haven't been able to find that piece, but I have downloaded it to check it out.
I can't say that I'm the least impressed to see that it is set to listen on various ports by default for services I haven't chosen to run.
In the llllleeeeaaaaaaassssssst ...am I impressed that the default configuration of it, has a telnet account with a default password of "admin", of all the idiotic things!
Seriously it makes me want to run a virus scan now. In fact I no doubt will tomorrow.
I recommend anyone with the need to try this program install it while offline and immediatly disable those settings.
Regards,
Chris
I purchased it on a recent trip to New York, I found it in a music store next to my hotel. Although convenient, it would have been cheaper to order via mail while in the US - NY taxes are high!
There are a number of stores (eg. on ebay) that will send a card to Australia. Expect to spend about $180 - $200AUD inc. shipping. You must modify the 0404 to remove the coupling caps and buffer opamp, which makes a considerable difference to the dynamics of the card & improves the "silkyness" of the sound.
I'm really enjoying this setup - currently listening to the XRCD version of Dire Straights Brothers in Arms while typing this, amazing resolution, smoothness, soundstage & dynamics using this source, the 0404, Tripath and full range drivers. I'm wondering if there is a market for an audiophile PC audio setup like this......
Regards,
Dean
There are a number of stores (eg. on ebay) that will send a card to Australia. Expect to spend about $180 - $200AUD inc. shipping. You must modify the 0404 to remove the coupling caps and buffer opamp, which makes a considerable difference to the dynamics of the card & improves the "silkyness" of the sound.
I'm really enjoying this setup - currently listening to the XRCD version of Dire Straights Brothers in Arms while typing this, amazing resolution, smoothness, soundstage & dynamics using this source, the 0404, Tripath and full range drivers. I'm wondering if there is a market for an audiophile PC audio setup like this......
Regards,
Dean
great stuff, well thats actually what im attempting with my PC. ive gone about making it perfectly silent through waterocooling with passive radiation. with awesome results so far , just a fan free PSU for it and its as quiet as a CD player.
the PC is a bit unpractical atm , as everything was done on the extreme cheap to see if it would work , with a large coil as a radiator, and a large resivour, but ill be changing the setup over time to make it silent AND compact. saying that, by disconnecting 2 hoses i can still take it away for a LAN with friends etc , etc. but id like it to be more self contained.
now obviously the 404 will provide a good source for music, thanks for the tip ill defiantly be modding mine.
the PC is a bit unpractical atm , as everything was done on the extreme cheap to see if it would work , with a large coil as a radiator, and a large resivour, but ill be changing the setup over time to make it silent AND compact. saying that, by disconnecting 2 hoses i can still take it away for a LAN with friends etc , etc. but id like it to be more self contained.
now obviously the 404 will provide a good source for music, thanks for the tip ill defiantly be modding mine.
maJORD,
Hope you are either using distilled water or a percentage of antifreeze to prevent corrosion. It won't take long for it to get real nasty otherwise.
Check out the 1212 this is a worthy improvement over the 0404, at least on paper. I like the advanced specs as well as the fully balanced analog I/O. However it is twice as expensive. I just wish it had more than 2 channels.
Roger
http://www.zzounds.com/item--EMU1212M
Hope you are either using distilled water or a percentage of antifreeze to prevent corrosion. It won't take long for it to get real nasty otherwise.
Check out the 1212 this is a worthy improvement over the 0404, at least on paper. I like the advanced specs as well as the fully balanced analog I/O. However it is twice as expensive. I just wish it had more than 2 channels.
Roger
http://www.zzounds.com/item--EMU1212M
deandob said:
Dean,
As the dynamic range of the 1212 is better on paper I would think you wouldn't be disappointed with it either.
I am still in a quandary, I want the full surround but not the heavy additional expense. I sure would love to get into an 1820 but will probably have to settle for the 1212.
How about some further insight into the software necessary to get from point A to B? I don’t have a clue and need to be taken by the hand. I am a hardware type not a programmer. Lossless? Surround drivers? Format conversion? Etc. All I am doing now is using the latest version of the windows media player.
Roger
Hi,
Roger as far as lossless audio goes it's a breeze, you can even find some samples online.... better than from my garbage CDROM.
Just do some googling on lossless audio and you'll find all kinds of information. There's no real standard as to the best format, it coudl be zip, rar, ape, shorten, worst comes to worse you convert whatever format it is to a wave or wmd file is also lossless I think.
You can copy your own CD onto the drive too, don't really need anything special. So far I've found variable bitrate very acceptable but we'll see with the new system.
I got my new card, I can tell you this much, don't hook up an 1820M to a motherboard with a hacked up esupport bios. I just traded my old sound card for a new motherboard and processor, will get back to you on it in a week or so.
The only market for this is in the ultra high end, but I think most would rather buy the "brand name" as seen in and reviewed by..
Also there's the "what? I need a computer too? But I can check my email at work" ...
Hey all I need now are six more channels and a projector! Then I'll start charging admission.
Regards,
Chris
Roger as far as lossless audio goes it's a breeze, you can even find some samples online.... better than from my garbage CDROM.
Just do some googling on lossless audio and you'll find all kinds of information. There's no real standard as to the best format, it coudl be zip, rar, ape, shorten, worst comes to worse you convert whatever format it is to a wave or wmd file is also lossless I think.
You can copy your own CD onto the drive too, don't really need anything special. So far I've found variable bitrate very acceptable but we'll see with the new system.
I got my new card, I can tell you this much, don't hook up an 1820M to a motherboard with a hacked up esupport bios. I just traded my old sound card for a new motherboard and processor, will get back to you on it in a week or so.
The only market for this is in the ultra high end, but I think most would rather buy the "brand name" as seen in and reviewed by..
Also there's the "what? I need a computer too? But I can check my email at work" ...
Hey all I need now are six more channels and a projector! Then I'll start charging admission.
Regards,
Chris
Majord,
Go for the 0404. I'm really happy with it, although I will be using a more top end card for my main system in the home theater. A positive point for the 0404 is that even the less audiophile music in your collection will sound good - I have noticed that with a lot of really high quality gear its difficult to listen to poorer quality sources.
Roger,
Note that the 1820 is not really any good for a multichannel system system as it only has stereo wdm drivers, only promusic software will be able to access all channels concurrently. Do you want the multchannel card for DVD watching? The only other card with similar specs to the 1820 and that works for consumer multichannel is the Lynx 2B but that is even more $$ although an excellently engineered card. Other alternatives are the RME digi96/8 which you can purchase additional channel modules when you need them, Gina 3G or the m-audio 410. Having gone from a m-audio 410 to the EMU 0404 I prefer the 0404, and I have not heard the Gina although its specs look good. There are other pro/semipro cards to be considered if you do an internet search.
I have a checklist which is used to compare each card, with the following categories:
Channels
Balanced outputs
quality of D/A
Bass management
Linked volume control
88.2/176.4 support
Optical SPDIF
Breakout box
DC coupling
Firewire
Transformer Coax SPDIF
Bypass kmixer
Asio & kernel streaming
Isolation from PC
WDM support MCE/WMP
Multi wdm
Passes bit perfect SPDIF and DTS/DD
SPDIF input
HTPC Software support & updates
Macro Scriptable driver
Price
accessable Clock Sync
Power on thump
Options
According to the comparisons I have made, the Lynx 2B is the perfect card for me, except I'm still looking for a cost effective source (ebay or second hand). If anyone has a used Lynx 2B for sale or know where I can get one below USD $700 then I'd like to know.
Regarding software, there is a bit of reading for you to do to arrive at the best setup for optimum sound quality. Here is a summary list with reading references:
- Ensure you have a quality drive to rip your CDs to hard disk. Personally I use a plextor clone, liteon drives are well regarded. For more info see http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showforum=20
- Clean all your CDs before ripping. I use a soft damp cloth (that does not scratch the plastic coating) or on problem disks a bit of toothpaste. Clean from the outside of the disk in, at right angles to the concentric tracks.
- Use exact audio copy (EAC) to copy the CD tracks to hard disk. EAC will ensure that the copy is as perfect as possible. Most other rippers will rip and leave in any disk errors, EAC will re-read the disk when the hardware detects an error as many times as needed to ensure it has the correct bits.
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
- Once on the disk in raw WAV format, you want to store the files in a lossless format (not MP3, itunes etc!) to save hard disk space. I recommend Microsoft's professional lossless Windows Media Audio (WMA lossless) as this format will stay around for a while and read by a number of players, and if you want to transcode it to another format or compression, you can without reducing quality. I have written my own software to catalog all my music in WMA lossless and writing all the metadata to a Microsoft Access database. This allows a lot of flexibility especially as I have also written my own player front end that accesses the database & opens the particular music file I'm searching for. With this system I can generate dynamic playlists based on certain criteria like "play all the softer jazz music that my wife likes and we have not heard for 2 months". This system is quite complex and I dont have a software installer for it, however I can share the batch file that processes the WAV file and creates the WMA lossless files. There are also a numbe of tools on the web that can make this job easy, like http://www.litexmedia.com/wma_workshop/ (note I have not tried this software so I dont know if its good or bad)
- OK, now you are ready to play your music, and you need a software player that will not mess with the sound. Specifically it will need to bypass Windows sound mixer that will mess with the sound if you dont have the volume up to max, and will need to not add any of its own distortion. If you are looking for a music player that has some of the functionality that I have described above, then j.River's media center http://www.jrmediacenter.com/ will allow you manage your collection and is basically a swiss army knife music player. You will need to setup the sourdcard to either use ASIO or kernel streaming to avoid the Windows mixer.
Hopefully the above gives you a starting point. The hardest part is copying all your music to the PC, however the flexibility that you have makes your music collection more accessable and more enjoyable.
Regards,
Dean
Go for the 0404. I'm really happy with it, although I will be using a more top end card for my main system in the home theater. A positive point for the 0404 is that even the less audiophile music in your collection will sound good - I have noticed that with a lot of really high quality gear its difficult to listen to poorer quality sources.
Roger,
Note that the 1820 is not really any good for a multichannel system system as it only has stereo wdm drivers, only promusic software will be able to access all channels concurrently. Do you want the multchannel card for DVD watching? The only other card with similar specs to the 1820 and that works for consumer multichannel is the Lynx 2B but that is even more $$ although an excellently engineered card. Other alternatives are the RME digi96/8 which you can purchase additional channel modules when you need them, Gina 3G or the m-audio 410. Having gone from a m-audio 410 to the EMU 0404 I prefer the 0404, and I have not heard the Gina although its specs look good. There are other pro/semipro cards to be considered if you do an internet search.
I have a checklist which is used to compare each card, with the following categories:
Channels
Balanced outputs
quality of D/A
Bass management
Linked volume control
88.2/176.4 support
Optical SPDIF
Breakout box
DC coupling
Firewire
Transformer Coax SPDIF
Bypass kmixer
Asio & kernel streaming
Isolation from PC
WDM support MCE/WMP
Multi wdm
Passes bit perfect SPDIF and DTS/DD
SPDIF input
HTPC Software support & updates
Macro Scriptable driver
Price
accessable Clock Sync
Power on thump
Options
According to the comparisons I have made, the Lynx 2B is the perfect card for me, except I'm still looking for a cost effective source (ebay or second hand). If anyone has a used Lynx 2B for sale or know where I can get one below USD $700 then I'd like to know.
Regarding software, there is a bit of reading for you to do to arrive at the best setup for optimum sound quality. Here is a summary list with reading references:
- Ensure you have a quality drive to rip your CDs to hard disk. Personally I use a plextor clone, liteon drives are well regarded. For more info see http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showforum=20
- Clean all your CDs before ripping. I use a soft damp cloth (that does not scratch the plastic coating) or on problem disks a bit of toothpaste. Clean from the outside of the disk in, at right angles to the concentric tracks.
- Use exact audio copy (EAC) to copy the CD tracks to hard disk. EAC will ensure that the copy is as perfect as possible. Most other rippers will rip and leave in any disk errors, EAC will re-read the disk when the hardware detects an error as many times as needed to ensure it has the correct bits.
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
- Once on the disk in raw WAV format, you want to store the files in a lossless format (not MP3, itunes etc!) to save hard disk space. I recommend Microsoft's professional lossless Windows Media Audio (WMA lossless) as this format will stay around for a while and read by a number of players, and if you want to transcode it to another format or compression, you can without reducing quality. I have written my own software to catalog all my music in WMA lossless and writing all the metadata to a Microsoft Access database. This allows a lot of flexibility especially as I have also written my own player front end that accesses the database & opens the particular music file I'm searching for. With this system I can generate dynamic playlists based on certain criteria like "play all the softer jazz music that my wife likes and we have not heard for 2 months". This system is quite complex and I dont have a software installer for it, however I can share the batch file that processes the WAV file and creates the WMA lossless files. There are also a numbe of tools on the web that can make this job easy, like http://www.litexmedia.com/wma_workshop/ (note I have not tried this software so I dont know if its good or bad)
- OK, now you are ready to play your music, and you need a software player that will not mess with the sound. Specifically it will need to bypass Windows sound mixer that will mess with the sound if you dont have the volume up to max, and will need to not add any of its own distortion. If you are looking for a music player that has some of the functionality that I have described above, then j.River's media center http://www.jrmediacenter.com/ will allow you manage your collection and is basically a swiss army knife music player. You will need to setup the sourdcard to either use ASIO or kernel streaming to avoid the Windows mixer.
Hopefully the above gives you a starting point. The hardest part is copying all your music to the PC, however the flexibility that you have makes your music collection more accessable and more enjoyable.
Regards,
Dean
Hi,
I don't think it's fair to rule out the 1820M based on the stereo wmd driver issue, full support should be in a future driver update for it.
Wouldn't a juli card be more appealing than a 0404? It seemed like it to me at least.
It seems the J.Rivers Media Center has ASIO output support and handles video as well as music. Could be just the thing for my card, sounds like a great program.
Nice guide on ripping the audio, very large drive manditory.
Thanks,
Chris
I don't think it's fair to rule out the 1820M based on the stereo wmd driver issue, full support should be in a future driver update for it.
Wouldn't a juli card be more appealing than a 0404? It seemed like it to me at least.
It seems the J.Rivers Media Center has ASIO output support and handles video as well as music. Could be just the thing for my card, sounds like a great program.
Nice guide on ripping the audio, very large drive manditory.
Thanks,
Chris
Chris, I wont be holding my breath for multichannel WDM drivers for the 1820M. See this thread in the EMU forum:
http://www.productionforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=509&start=120
Regarding hard disk size, assume 250Mb per CD in lossless format, so 500 CDs = approx 125Gb, pretty cheap these days.
Regards,
Dean
http://www.productionforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=509&start=120
Regarding hard disk size, assume 250Mb per CD in lossless format, so 500 CDs = approx 125Gb, pretty cheap these days.
Regards,
Dean
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.