The TOL Asus PCIE sound cards work fairly well even with new computers they do 24/192 but can't handle 176.4khz.
Well we can see what kind of company M-Audio is. My question on loop back and clipping cross talk was removed from their forum.
Ordering a Focusrite tonight. Bodzio suggests the Firewire version for SoundEasy but besides the money for features I don't need, it comes with this fancy mixer software like the emu did which was a real pain. So, I may try the 2i2 as it is absolutely simple, and if I need the Pro 14 Firewire, at least I'll have a USB for portable audio testing that works. The M-Audio FastTrack has too much in to out mix.
Fancy sound cards have a problem in long cables and I would need a separate mic preamp. They eliminate the USB/Firewire problem though. Too bad the emu was such a piece of junk, as it was a PCI card with external acquisition head unit.
The vendor I was talking too thinks Focusrite is stand up. He also implied the problem is in the drivers and emu and M have really poor drivers. They all use the same chips.
Ordering a Focusrite tonight. Bodzio suggests the Firewire version for SoundEasy but besides the money for features I don't need, it comes with this fancy mixer software like the emu did which was a real pain. So, I may try the 2i2 as it is absolutely simple, and if I need the Pro 14 Firewire, at least I'll have a USB for portable audio testing that works. The M-Audio FastTrack has too much in to out mix.
Fancy sound cards have a problem in long cables and I would need a separate mic preamp. They eliminate the USB/Firewire problem though. Too bad the emu was such a piece of junk, as it was a PCI card with external acquisition head unit.
The vendor I was talking too thinks Focusrite is stand up. He also implied the problem is in the drivers and emu and M have really poor drivers. They all use the same chips.
ARTA, HOLM and others big advantage is they use the MLS method for the spectrum analyzer that allows you to gate the measurement. Even for LF tests where I use TrueRta, I use "Quick Sweep" so as not to aggravate the room too much. Can't do that with an external generator. SoundEasy uses a reference probe concept that should zero out most of the test system error. I think HOLM does too, but I have not had time to play with it. I keep an external HP generator around as with it and RtueRTA, it is easy to investigate modes in a room and things that rattle. No good for speaker design work. So, it depends on what you are using it for.
The 1616m issue depended on the host. I had on-board video. The problem was the emu kept trying to write to it. Where your drivers are installed may have made it a non-issue. Just playing back a CD would crash. The person who bought it had a Mac.
Where does the noise start? Looking at tweeters, the 96K sample rate is fine for seeing the breakup modes in the low 20's. I wanted the higher rate as I also work on amps and wished to see distortion into the 100K range.
Need a USB card for ARTA...Maybe Tascam?
I was looking at the 0404 and 0204 from EMU but had heard that there was no support for WIN7 (Beta drivers only).
I was going to look at the Tascam US series (US322, US200 etc). Up until now I had used an M-Audio Audiophhile 192 but I am switching to a laptop based system for everything (measurements, CAD, reading etc) and a USB or Firewire interface is required.
Have ordered the laptop but haven't picked a sound interface yet.
Matt
I was looking at the 0404 and 0204 from EMU but had heard that there was no support for WIN7 (Beta drivers only).
I was going to look at the Tascam US series (US322, US200 etc). Up until now I had used an M-Audio Audiophhile 192 but I am switching to a laptop based system for everything (measurements, CAD, reading etc) and a USB or Firewire interface is required.
Have ordered the laptop but haven't picked a sound interface yet.
Matt
I used the EMU 0404 with W7 x64 and Arta without any problems, switching to the EMU 1616 now.
Peter
Ordered the 2i2. Alan at SW says the improvements in the drivers in the last year for USB-2 have made them more stable and faster than Firewire. I have a Profire 610 available now, cheap. And a FastTrack.
Telstar,
I can see the prospect of lower noise with battery power. Getting the power line noise out of a test bench can be really hard. I used just plain TrueRta for setting tube bias with my old HP generator. It is clean enough even on line power. That was why I wanted the 192K acquisition. For really decent measurements though, you may not get there with a sound card. Think good old HP notch filter setup off e-bay.
Telstar,
I can see the prospect of lower noise with battery power. Getting the power line noise out of a test bench can be really hard. I used just plain TrueRta for setting tube bias with my old HP generator. It is clean enough even on line power. That was why I wanted the 192K acquisition. For really decent measurements though, you may not get there with a sound card. Think good old HP notch filter setup off e-bay.
I have some issues with stability with 0404 and W7 X64.
Not that it prevents me from using the card, but I would carefully consider using this producer in the future as they seems to have dropped all support.
their TOL PCI-e Xonar's, they have the market cornered. Notice the prices keep going up.
A little secret is their HDAV1.3. These are 99% the same and can be found used for a decent price used from home theater enthusiasts who no longer need them now that HD Dolby is included in video cards.
There will be no new good USB products until USB3.0 is truly standardized, it makes USB 2.0 480mbs and asynchrounous UAC2 obsolete so manufacturers aren't going to invest in USB2. That could be a while since Intel is only now just making USB 3.0 native with Haswell the end of this year. I wouldn't hold my breath.
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