David- I'm glad the correction file trick works with Arta. What drives me nuts with it is the limitations on the graphics display. Scaling at 20 dB per step and no easy way to add the 90 dB correction, let alone the 7 dB.
Spectrum lab is pretty neat but difficult to bend for this task. I think we are all reverting to the tools we know.
Spectrum lab is pretty neat but difficult to bend for this task. I think we are all reverting to the tools we know.
Audio applications that access Windows sound services in shared mode get automatically resampled on the fly. That means almost all applications. The default sample rate Windows uses can be set in the sound device advanced properties settings, from the Windows control panel. Usually, Windows defaults to 16/44, so need to be careful if that matters.
ASIO bypasses Windows sound service, so it doesn't have that problem.
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I went through all of that and cross checked with the juli@ card in the same machine and something about the Asus drivers was not happy. I think CMedia's driver is newer and may work OK. Trying to get meaningful help from Asus is quite difficult. I do have a back door into CMedia however.
Demian,
Do you get strange LF peaks - which is what I sometimes get. Switching Fs back and forth, either via Arta or windows control panel, usually gets rid of it but its seems haphazard.
Otherwise, +1 for the Xonar DX. Been using one for years. Blew one up (don't ask!) so bought another.
CS5361 ADC, CS4398 DAC
You can change the scaling to what ever you want. Click down on the range spinner 5 time and it's 10dB/div. Click down on the range spinner 10 times and it's 5dB/div.
To add scale correction go to the calibrate drop down. Put 1Vrms into the sound card and enter 1000mVrms + some offset amount. if you want to subtract 10dB then enter 316.623mVrms. If that doesn't go where you want it then add 10dB. Enter 3162.3mVrms, etc.
I got Spectrum Lab going again. If you play with it after a while you'll remember where everything is. I did find that the author screwed up all of the averaging. The averaging changes the scale. Don't use it.
EssB I have only used it for a short while and have not noticed the LF issues yet. I need to build a headphone test system using a small form factor case which is what lead me to the card. I also need a low profile bracket for it and ASUS is not helpful. I may just buy another to get the bracket. Have you seen the 192 sample rate problem? set everything to 192 (In Win 7-10 there are lots of places to check) and then try to play and record in loopback 60 KHz. Arta works fine in ASIO but something insists on mangling the playback in WDM. Maybe there is some DSP nonsense i have not figured out how to defeat?
Seems like the cheap sound card method is a crap shoot for a PNP operation for test instrument purposes??
I have no patience left for fiddling with hardware/software/firmware.
I have a nice Bench Mark ADC/DAC2..... maybe that is a better way to go but aint cheap... maybe used one is OK.
But is there anything wrong with the QA400/401 ?? Total PnP.
THx-RNMarsh
I have no patience left for fiddling with hardware/software/firmware.
I have a nice Bench Mark ADC/DAC2..... maybe that is a better way to go but aint cheap... maybe used one is OK.
But is there anything wrong with the QA400/401 ?? Total PnP.
THx-RNMarsh
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I think I'd just rework the full height bracket and make it fit - it's just the top end that needs lowering. If you really get stuck maybe I could send you the one off my old blown up card, I never threw it out.
No, I haven't seen the 192 rate problem, probably because I saw the usual noise shaping hump and decided it wasn't going to show me much in the way of low level harmonics above 50K. I'll try it anyway when I've got some time in a week or so.
DSP stuff: do you have the 'Xonar DX Audio Center' in the sys tray ?
Make sure its set to 2 channels, 2 speakers, DSP mode to HiFi and all the other 'features' disabled. But you've probably been though all that.
If you get the LF junk it looks like this:
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I don't find any of the canned software solutions very useful, I need a full math package like Matlab, or Mathematica and do my own post processing for any serious work. Thankfully the scientific community has provided free solutions.
You will love John Vanderkooy and Richard Mann's article in the upcoming Vol 13:
'An Open-Source Electroacoustic Measurement System: Part 1: Theory, Practicalities & Acoustic Examples; Part 2: Sound Card Setup, System Characterization and a few more Examples
This two-part article describes the design, configuration, software and use of a general-purpose electroacoustic measurement system. The system is based on typical soundcards, of which a few are featured. The software used is GNU Octave, a powerful, free, open-source analysis tool.
The aim is to place a powerful analysis system in the hands of anyone, encouraging high-level electroacoustic measurements, both of speaker systems as well as electro-acoustical equipment, and promote their understanding. The focus is to explain the details of how measurements are accomplished, and promote programming by the user. A fair amount of general measurement theory is presented, together with the mathematics and implementation. Programs are given and explained, along with a few examples.'
Octave all over it but I guess Python would also do.
Jan
You can typically translate a lot as you type from one to the other. My problem with Octave (years ago) was that the developers did not include Matlab's signal processing toolbox probably due to copyright issues. It was packed with sometimes trivial utility functions that most of the academics simply used in their scripts because they were there. So it was hard to use anyone's previous work in Matlab without a lot of extra work. Also Python is more general purpose, now if they could get SoX to do ASIO that would really benefit the community.
BTW how did they deal with Windows or did they just avoid it? The hidden resampling, etc. is not good for scientific work. Nothing like having the soundcard set to 24bits and 192kHz and clearly seeing the noise floor brickwalled at 22.05kHz with no warnings or errors.
EDIT - I would happily review and comment if it's not to late.
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Scott does the interface make a difference with windows? Is the re-sampling a USB thing or is this seen with PCI interface as well? Microsoft claims they don't mess with it unless the programmer specifies it by configuration.
Mayne this might help
Octave-Forge packages expand Octave's core functionality by providing field specific features via Octave's package system. For example, image and signal processing, fuzzy logic, instrument control, and statistics packages are examples of individual Octave-Forge packages
List of packages here
packages
Octave-Forge packages expand Octave's core functionality by providing field specific features via Octave's package system. For example, image and signal processing, fuzzy logic, instrument control, and statistics packages are examples of individual Octave-Forge packages
List of packages here
packages
I've had little luck finding out what's going on at times. Before I bought ARTA I swear just starting it up in demo mode and connecting to the sound card and switching to another app left the card in the correct mode, SOMETIMES.
I'm mostly only interested in taking high res measurements and not worried about generating signals especially high frequency ones with a soundcard. BTW ocenaudio seems to work under Win10 with both Scarlet and ASUS USB devices. The recent upgrade added 24/32 bit export modes and 96kHz files went out to 48kHz and had 24 bits.
It was this sort of thing that got Matt @ QA going on the QA400. He wanted a platform independent of win audio. He claims he spent 3 hour trying to figure out how calibrate ARTA. I'll bet it was a non licensed version. The other problem is any other app can mess with win audio which messes up the cal and changes other setting without the awareness of the operator.
Where is Edmon's Software?
They've added a lot since I last looked. By now all these open source programs have literally 100's of add ons. I don't know if the prebuilt versions of Octave include the right ones, but if you have to install gcc and build everything from source most folks here will run away. Unfortunately audio I/O remains weak most of the time. Does anyone out there use Sox with a PCI card and Windows which will record at 24bits? Switching to Linux/ALSA might fix the worst of these problems.
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I forgot about that, it's been a while. BTW You can download and start the QA400 software, as ARTA it would also only do part of what I want.