Just beware that the cards you mention are all limited to 16/44-48 in Windows.
That's fine for real world measurements, but fall well short of the needs of SOTA workers.
I'm pretty sure with difficulty I did 24/96 on a Xonar-U5. Even with the Scarlet I needed to run something like ARTA to set the sample rate and resolution and then go back to Audition to record. BTW you probably know Audacity almost always returns 8 zeros in the LSB's even set at 24 bit.
Arny is right the heyday seems to have passed on USB sound cards.
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Under XP I had no trouble getting the EMU-0204 to record at 24/96. I fact I disabled the AC coupling and used it as a lab instrument to record heart rate and SPO2 data. The device does not work at all now under W7.
What happens when you use Audition directly and set the sample and bit rate in it?
Does Audacity truncate and zero fill for 24 bit?
It's a well known problem that Audacity uses a library that does not support 24 bits in the usual Windows sound environments. I'm not a Windows sound geek but MME or Direct Sound don't work and the WASAPI choice (which I gather can do 24 bits in some cases) is grayed out. You need to ask someone who knows the details.
It seems like there is something going on behind the scenes that sticks after one application connects and disconnects from the device. ????
It's easy to verify, just record a short section with input shorted and dump the data to a program that can actually look at the values (bits).
I think it is important for the card itself to work in 24bit/96KHz mode. I think I can go back and check the Xonar U7 again, but I have been trying for a long time.
Most cards are designed for musicians and the music industry, it seems for measurements, the design would be much simpler. Would love to see something that will just plug in and use.
This is the U5 format selection portion of its app. I'll try again to get a screen shot of the actual data. I decided to use a field recorder off line on batteries to make recordings that really matter.
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One categorical problem is that many if not most consumer oriented audio interfaces with high quality outputs do not have inputs with the same wonderful capabilities.
If you want any guarantee of symmetrical performance, then its off to the land of pro audio. Then you will find that there may be home studio oriented features that get in your way.
Only talking about 16 vs 24 bits right now not the finer performance points, in my experience all to often bits 16-23 are simply zeros.
The format selections in the Xonar format setup have nothing to do with whether it is running full duplex or not.
To be specific a lot of 24 bit consumer cards are truly > 16 bits for playback, but as you say the record sides are barely 16 bits if that.
If you loop them, it thus appears that the 24 bit sides aren't truely > 16 bit.
If you test them with a different card that has true >16 bit ADCs, the potential of the playback sides becomes apparent.
I was hoping for something existing that would be good for measurements. The Xonar U7 I got was intended mainly for playback which seems to be good for such purpose. I was just hoping that it would be good for measurements, but apparently it was still insufficient for my needs. I am sure lots of DIYers hope there were some cost effective solution.
I was also wondering that USB 2.0 seems to have the bandwidth to do 24bit/192KHz, but no such product ever showed up. Perhaps such a device would need more power than could be supplied from the USB connection spec?
What program would you suggest? Presumably, you use sox, but I'm rather stupid in that direction...
The eMu 0404 USB is USB 2.0 and runs well up to and including 24/192.
So, no inherent problems there.
It relies on an external power supply.
I also use two pieces.
In the last months I bought two for my friends on the ebay.
emu0404 usb | eBay
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