Re: Re: AudioTrak Prodigy 7.1hifi
I am using the EMU4-4 USB with headphones. It's very good sounding and I've had no problems with it. I'm not using it for PC XO since it doesn't have enough outputs. For that I'm using RME HDSP cards.
454Casull said:
I am using the EMU4-4 USB with headphones. It's very good sounding and I've had no problems with it. I'm not using it for PC XO since it doesn't have enough outputs. For that I'm using RME HDSP cards.
Is there anyone using RME card with WCM?
How about feed the WCM with 1ppm TCXO?
Just wondering what's the fs it use.
low fs TCXO is not easy to find.
How about feed the WCM with 1ppm TCXO?
Just wondering what's the fs it use.
low fs TCXO is not easy to find.
Frode said:
Thanks frode, unless you have experience I would stay away from PCMIA. Even the simplist cards work on some laptops and not others. I just need to set up a 2way xover to determine where, between 300 and 800Hz I should put the xover point. I was hoping it would be simple.
Terry
Re: AudioTrak Prodigy 7.1hifi
How is the sound quality?
Did you compare this setup with anything else?
ted4412wilt said:
How is the sound quality?
Did you compare this setup with anything else?
I used to use cd player before I went to onboard computer sound. This sound card is dead silent whereas onboard was very noisy. Obviously I did not compare this with $1000 soundcards but I really doubt if the difference would be audible. I have used this for several month now and completely happy with it.
I have several amplifiers and experiment with different combinations of speakers and digital crossover settings. Currently using 1964 AR3 woofers with cloth surrounds I treated with Pliobond to seal the leaks. I use 12dB low pass at 1600Hz plus 6dB inductor already present in the AR3 cabinet and run North D25 tweeters high passed at 1400Hz 24dB. I use equalization on the sound card to get a better frequency response. I am in the process of building a multispeaker large OB. I love the sound of OB upper midrange but you lose a lot of bass unless you design with lots of speakers and baffle design.
I have measurement euipment and will eventually use REW to get room and speaker equalization.
Ted
I have several amplifiers and experiment with different combinations of speakers and digital crossover settings. Currently using 1964 AR3 woofers with cloth surrounds I treated with Pliobond to seal the leaks. I use 12dB low pass at 1600Hz plus 6dB inductor already present in the AR3 cabinet and run North D25 tweeters high passed at 1400Hz 24dB. I use equalization on the sound card to get a better frequency response. I am in the process of building a multispeaker large OB. I love the sound of OB upper midrange but you lose a lot of bass unless you design with lots of speakers and baffle design.
I have measurement euipment and will eventually use REW to get room and speaker equalization.
Ted
ted4412wilt said:
Did you compare the sound with your cdp?
I found my quartet to come close, when used without XO, with xxhighend (which sounds better than foobar/asio, but no asio and therefor no XO for the moment) and to a preamp (i assume it does impedance matching)
Do you go straight to your amps with it?
I have experienced increased distortion and pops/clicks with my quartet when going straight to the power amp, instead that passing through a pre.
I didnt try foobar xo plugin yet, but also with console + rerouting with their utility (similar to esi), it also has pops/clicks.
I dont really know what the f*ck to get. The Asus d2x seems to have better dacs (which matters a lot to me) and some simple Xo built in the drivers. Thuneau likes it. The price difference is minimal (20-30eur tops).
They released new drivers this march and i havent read much complaints since then.
I'm also using OB (building and measuring them) and the flexibility of a computer for such matters is unparalled.
Telstar,
I word of caution regarding the Asus D2X. I bought one to use with Thuneau's frequency allocator and eventually gave up.
I used Jack Router and set up as described on Thuneau's site, but could only get 2 channel output from the D2X. I tried all of the drivers available from Asus and they are all flakey, had a few BSOD. I'm running windows xp, don't know if Vista would be better.
I ended up with a EMU 1616m (got it new for £279 as the retailer had the wrong price!) and as I need 8 channels, I now use the D2X as a D/A converter for the subs.
I word of caution regarding the Asus D2X. I bought one to use with Thuneau's frequency allocator and eventually gave up.
I used Jack Router and set up as described on Thuneau's site, but could only get 2 channel output from the D2X. I tried all of the drivers available from Asus and they are all flakey, had a few BSOD. I'm running windows xp, don't know if Vista would be better.
I ended up with a EMU 1616m (got it new for £279 as the retailer had the wrong price!) and as I need 8 channels, I now use the D2X as a D/A converter for the subs.
Telstar,
I hardly ever use my CD now. I moved most of my CDs to my hard drive and mostly listen to internet radio using Foobar. Some stations play old mono records that are not worth listening to except for historical purposes but some have excellent sound. I get to hear music I cannot afford to buy and enlarge my list of good compositions. Classical music is somewhat sparse on the Internet but still many to choose from.
I go direct to a Sony receiver that handles 4 ohm speakers for everything except tweeter. I also go direct to a T amp board and use the sound card volume control for those channels. No pops, cracks or other noise. The Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1hifi has superior shielding which may be deficient in your card. Don't get too hung up on SDN figures as long as you get at least 108 dB. Audiotrak has a new card with the best SDN but only 4 channels which is not enough for serious digital crossover use. I use all 8 channels when I have all of my speakers connected.
I only use one PCI slot located away from the video card. Maybe your sound card is picking up extra noise from other cards?
I have not tried ASIO yet but one of the advantages of the Audiotrak is their DirectWire ability that gives great flexibility for connecting inputs to any output internally. I just use the Foobar crossover. It is so simple that even I got it to work! My temporary setup has my tweeters sitting on top of my AR3s and needs to be delayed by 4 inches in the crossover setting. Only takes a few seconds to change that setting.
http://xover.sourceforge.net/
Ted
I hardly ever use my CD now. I moved most of my CDs to my hard drive and mostly listen to internet radio using Foobar. Some stations play old mono records that are not worth listening to except for historical purposes but some have excellent sound. I get to hear music I cannot afford to buy and enlarge my list of good compositions. Classical music is somewhat sparse on the Internet but still many to choose from.
I go direct to a Sony receiver that handles 4 ohm speakers for everything except tweeter. I also go direct to a T amp board and use the sound card volume control for those channels. No pops, cracks or other noise. The Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1hifi has superior shielding which may be deficient in your card. Don't get too hung up on SDN figures as long as you get at least 108 dB. Audiotrak has a new card with the best SDN but only 4 channels which is not enough for serious digital crossover use. I use all 8 channels when I have all of my speakers connected.
I only use one PCI slot located away from the video card. Maybe your sound card is picking up extra noise from other cards?
I have not tried ASIO yet but one of the advantages of the Audiotrak is their DirectWire ability that gives great flexibility for connecting inputs to any output internally. I just use the Foobar crossover. It is so simple that even I got it to work! My temporary setup has my tweeters sitting on top of my AR3s and needs to be delayed by 4 inches in the crossover setting. Only takes a few seconds to change that setting.
http://xover.sourceforge.net/
Ted
ted4412wilt said:
Hi Ted,
Storage and easy catalogue is obviously the main advantage of computer audio, but I cannot allow myself to downgrade. So the sound should at least equal my cdp.
Because i hear no problems with the soundcard hooked to the preamp (except higher distortion respect to the cdp), i give the culprit to the impedence matching. the 9kohm of the F3 is surely not the typical thing.
Also cables are balanced but there are two adaptors and those are all bad for the sound.
I'm getting a MSB multichannel volume control which has excellent impedance values and buffers, so that shouldnt be an issue again.
ted4412wilt said:
Which audiotrack card are you referring to? The HD2?
I need only 4 channels, as my speakers are (will be) 2-ways.
ted4412wilt said:
Very likely, since it is not a dedicated computer, there are many fans and even 15k scsi discs.
ted4412wilt said:
Can you use the foobar crossover plugin with wasapi?
it's easy to test the XO freq, but then i would move to more advanced algorythms such as the ones used in acourate.
mleggett said:
Wonder if console or reaper would have worked. Funnily thuneau recommends the d2x to use with asio.
What's your opinion of the freq allocator vs. other XOs (such as for instance foobar plugin). At a very basic level the d2/d2x has a subs XO embedded in the drivers.
mleggett said:
There are only two official drivers (for vista), the latest being march 2009: did you try this one too? it's supposed to fix some bsod
mleggett said:
I dont want to spend that much money for a temporary solution. i'm definitely looking only at <150euro cards.
And i'm considering the option of using two different 2-ch cards (such as an essence for the mid-highs and something else for the bass)> how did you make it work?
that MSB volume control is the very same thing as Panson's basically, only the wolfson chip has much better features....
http://www.pansonaudio.com/initial_wm8816pre-amp.htm
he has a thread here .
http://www.pansonaudio.com/initial_wm8816pre-amp.htm
he has a thread here .
mleggett said:
I'm surprised you had trouble with the Xonar D2. I ran mine for about a year now and ever since I updated the drivers from the ones that came on the CD, I had no problems. No BSD's or freezes. I didn't even bother to look for newer drivers- and I'm sure there must be some since last year.
The only thing I can think of is- mine is PCI and yours is PCI Express, and there are some differences in drivers, but it's only speculation.
If you run just the Allocator inside VSTShell (no Jack), can you see all 8 outputs?
Thunau said:
I can see all the outputs in Allocator and I've tried an analogue input to the D2x to avoid the need for Jack for internal routing and still no joy. I suspect that the D2 is more stable than the D2X. The EMU-1616m has been great though, solid drivers.
Telstar said:
Thuneau uses the D2 which is PCI and seems more stable than the D2X.
Telstar said:
Allocator is very flexible, allowing variable filter slopes and Q, time delay and equaliser functions. You'll need a measurement system to get the best out of it. I may be wrong but I think that the Foobar plugin only allows standard filters. i.e not very flexible.
Telstar said:
The EMU card has only 6 analogue outputs, so I set channels 7/8 to the SPDIF output on the EMU, then use the SPDIF input on the D2x. I don't know how you would access various sound cards from the software.
mleggett said:
Must be this. I'll have only one pci slot so my preference would have been for a pci-e card.
tritosine said:
Thanks for the heads up, but considering the price of a used MVC, it's a no brainer.
However, have you got a link to panson's thread here?
Thunau said:
Afaik March 2009 are the latest ones for both versions.
Thunau said:
What do you suggest as vst host?
Console? Reaper?
Note that i'll use vista x64 /w7 x64.
Telstar said:
Jack is no good with 64bit OS. Neither is VSTShell. Reaper could work, it's just a pain in the butt to set it up and run it every time you want to just use your speaker crossover.
I'm a bit behind with all the latest 64bit OS's so you will have to excuse me- I don't have all the answers.
Maybe Winamp with the VST/Allocator output wrapper would work?
Personally I run a dedicated audio playback/crossover computer, which is a little Mini ITX with single core Celeron 230- more than enough power for the application. I run XP on it.
mleggett said:
My drivers have a little mode switch/drop down box, where you can select the operating mode. I remember setting it for 8 channel operation. Another thing is, make sure that your sampling frequency is consistent between applications.
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