Soundcards ?

psyfi

psyfi

Pie Fly
Forum Fun-raiser
Messages
14,872
Reaction score
1,073
Location
Aldermaston
Are PCI soundcards the best option or are the USB or Firewire cards worth considering also?
 
Look for the latency

I choose a PCI card (HDSP 9652) coz of shorter signal ways. It also has the best latency I ever saw: 1,5 milliseconds! I think neither USB nor Firewire can beat this.
But you have to pay 500 Euro for the card only without anolog audio output. It contains only digital/optical audio output. A breakout box (MultiFace; DigiFace) will cost you an extra amount of around 200 Euro or more.
I will never buy any other card along as PCI will be available. Once I saw a P4 (around 3 Gh) running this audio card with more than 32 virtual syntz simultan in real time.

Tom
 
your mum said:
Delta 1010 here. Never got it to work with WinXP Pro, but it works like a dream on Win98SE :)

Peace.
Click to expand...

strange that - I have a delta 10-10 - running like a dream on XP - not sure if its WinXP Pro or Home edition ......

... Ill find out .....

Did have a shitty korg 1212 and a digital O1V desk - copuldn't get XP drivers for the Korg so it all got sold and we bought a new analogue desk / delta 1010 - loaded XP on the PC - works fine after the usual expected tweaking ......
 
Nowt wrong with PCI, and solutions based on it are likely to be less buggy than USB / Firewire (cos it's older).

If you want to do professional music, there're only two things you need to remember:

1) You get what you pay for. If your soundcard's cheap, it'll sound cheap. Spend no less than £180.

2) AVOID CREATIVE LABS LIKE YOU WOULD AVOID A BURNING PUS-RIDDEN ZOMBIE WITH A CHAINSAW. They suck. Their cards suck. Their support sucks. Their site sucks. The people in the happy photos on their site suck.

They totally suxx0r.

Obviously, loads of people will say "I've got a Soundblaster and I've had no problems with it", to which I reply...

Yet.
 
Actually the DACs in the SBLive are known to be pretty good - the only arse with it is you have to sample everything at 48KHz if you don't want the drivers to fudge your wave up (the drivers resample inaccurately on the fly). I wouldn't recommend it for pro-audio work though - I used it because it was what I had when I started getting into production. Cosma used one for his first album, apparently...

Until I got my new machine up and running with the Echo Gina, I was using the SBLive with very few problems...

Saving up at the moment to get an Edirol PCR-1 and M100FX for my laptop work.

J.
 
generaljoe said:
1) You get what you pay for. If your soundcard's cheap, it'll sound cheap. Spend no less than £180.
Click to expand...

:unsure:

I'm using five Echo Gina 20's which I paid about £100 each for.

They give me 40 analogue outs and 10 analogue ins - with a stereo Spdif on each card.

The ASIO drivers give me 4ms latency and they have been 100% reliable.

And they don't sound cheap.
 
Ott^ said:
I'm using five Echo Gina 20's which I paid about £100 each for.
Click to expand...

I'm having a few IRQ issues with mine, and it's an arse because Echo have just stopped supporting them - best get one of the 24s second-hand if you're buying now...

Echo have actually been quite helpful (though they were trying to persuade me to upgrade to the Gina24s with a 50% discount) - it's Gigabyte (motherboard maker) that have been giving me grief... :mad:

tweaka - I was thinking the same thing - but on the flipside it's small enough to stash in my laptop backpack with room to spare and it has Direct Monitoring, which as far as I know the PCR-A30 lacks. The reason I'm after DM and so many inputs on a mobile setup is so I can demo live band stuff that sounds a bit better than dangling a mic in the centre of the room. ;)

J.
 
IRQ issues??

Wtf OS are you using?

When using XP Pro with the ACPI intact, I found they all got shoved onto IRQ 9 - which worked fine. When I ripped out the ACPI [recommended] I was able to force them to any IRQ I wanted.

The Plug and Pray implementation seems to work fine and so I can't imagine what problems you're having. I was under the impression that on XP, IRQ assignment is virtual anyway and the OS handles it all fine.

No?

Or have you got one of those rubbish mobos that fixes PCI slots to IRQ's?

Bah!

JPsychodelicacy said:
Ott^ said:
I'm using five Echo Gina 20's which I paid about £100 each for.
Click to expand...

I'm having a few IRQ issues with mine, and it's an arse because Echo have just stopped supporting them - best get one of the 24s second-hand if you're buying now...

Echo have actually been quite helpful (though they were trying to persuade me to upgrade to the Gina24s with a 50% discount) - it's Gigabyte (motherboard maker) that have been giving me grief... :mad:

J.
Click to expand...
 
XP Pro.

And I don't know what's causing it - it just locks the whole machine up completely - even the mouse pointer. It doesn't happen often, but it's really annoying when it does. It happens both in Logic and in SX2.

I'm getting a heftier (480W) PSU next month to see if that helps.

ACPI's disabled on mine and the Gina's sat quite happily on IRQ 18, but the way PCI works is that it only has 4 low-level physical IRQ buses; INT-A, INT-B, INT-C and INT-D, which the PCI IRQs are assigned to. Ideally you want it in a slot that has one and only one of these wired through it (the Asustek nForce2 board has INT-B hardwired to Slot 4). My mobo's one of the better ones (Gigabyte 7n400Pro2), but their tech support can't provide me with the bus assignment information (which Asus and Abit both provide in their manuals! :mad:)

Have I blown your mind yet?

It's not stopping me (thank smeg for incrememtal saves ;)), but I must admit it's slowed me down a bit. I will say when it is working, the latency is barely noticeable and it sounds gorgeous.

J.

(Yes, I know it's largely my fault for not having a separate computer for production and one for everything else, but I ain't made of money! ;))
 
Ott^ said:
Does it glitch?
Click to expand...

Nope, not even slightly - it's utterly rock solid. :)

It just crashes every few hours. :(

Having said all this, I do wonder if the hooky software I'm using plays a part in it.

I'm going to try it in Slot 4 tonight and see if it makes a positive difference.

J.
 
jamez_23 said:
your mum said:
Delta 1010 here. Never got it to work with WinXP Pro, but it works like a dream on Win98SE :)

Peace.
Click to expand...

strange that - I have a delta 10-10 - running like a dream on XP - not sure if its WinXP Pro or Home edition ......

... Ill find out .....

Did have a shitty korg 1212 and a digital O1V desk - copuldn't get XP drivers for the Korg so it all got sold and we bought a new analogue desk / delta 1010 - loaded XP on the PC - works fine after the usual expected tweaking ......
Click to expand...

its XPhome but ive had it working with XPpro too
 
Thanks guys for the recemendations I'm thinking of getting the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 Soundcard or one of its bigger borthers of ebayalthough I have seen a couple of Echo Gina 20's on there two. PCI is best option.
 
JPsychodelicacy said:
The Delta 1010 problem with XP only arises if you have two of them running in parallel, if I remember correctly.

J.
Click to expand...


aaaaahhh - I did wonder !!! cheers JP
 
Nope, not even slightly - it's utterly rock solid.

It just crashes every few hours.

Having said all this, I do wonder if the hooky software I'm using plays a part in it.

I'm going to try it in Slot 4 tonight and see if it makes a positive difference.

J.
Click to expand...

I had a similar problem once, complete lockup after using SX for an hour or two: it turned out to be issues with the processor. Check if your processor is overheating, if not perhaps adjust the processor voltage in the BIOS. That worked for me.
 
The other month in the Mac vs PC thread I said something to the effect that everyone knows macs are more compatible than PCs. Maybe I shouldn't have used "everybody" as this is quite obviously a hyperbole but this thread does illustrate my point about compatibility.

:runsmile:

I got a M-Audio FW410 and it works good but check the M-Audio thread I posted today.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top