PC sound card and NAP150

There are lots of sites you can look at including www.pcavtech.com for reviews of soundcards.

The magazine 'Computer Music' is good.

Good cards are the MidiMan Audiophile and the Echo Mia. [I have an Echo Mia but have not used it in a while -- I can't remember if it has a volume control on output : if definitly does not have a record level selector on input -- it's designed for use with a mixing desk].

Also considered good is the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. Try www.hardwareguys.com for a review.

But also think about how noisy the PC is ....

James

quote:

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But also think about how noisy the PC is...

and its level of jitter!

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Total bollox when u have a decent s/card and a competently setup PC. You've obviosly not haerd a good PC setup.

I have an Audiophile 24/96 - difficult to use and setup also expensive and not much better that the £30 Soundblaster 5.1 live it replaced. The SB's a real bargain and still available as OEM.

I have an M audio 24/96 card with phono in/out, and it is quite good. Even makes passable recordings for putting LP's onto CD. Much better than the Creative SB live which is aimed more at gamers and has a nasty edge to the sound on recording.

Sim

simtan
"My she was yar"

Have you thought about using the digital out of the sound card? Analogue output of most cards is poor but the digital out through a DAC (plenty of them going cheap nowadays) should sound excellent.

Mike

I am speaking from memory but I think [old] Soundblaster cards all worked at 44Hhz [DAT standard] and had an on-board 'sample rate conversion' to 44.1 [CD standard].

You were advised to record at 44KHz and run off-line conversion and I had a DOS program which did this.

James

"....But also think about how noisy the PC is... and its level of jitter..."

What I had in mind was physical noise i.e. fans ...

James

I've got an M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 in my studio PC, and an M-Audio Delta 410 in my HTPC. Both sound far superior (exceedingly less noise, along with better everything else) than any Sound Blasters that I've compared them too. They also sound better than the motherboards' built-in offerings. To top it off, their S/PDIF digital outputs sound better too!

Have said that, I should add that even the best PC sound card sounds like shite compared to any reasonably good CD player. For example, the Merdian 200+263 Transport+DAC combo in my office betters it by a good margin, when playing the same source material.

If you're set on doing the PC thing, I suggest you go with anything from M-Audio, as it tends to represent the best of a bad thing.

Something else to consider, though: Naim power amps are quite picky about the signal they get from the pre-amp. In this case, your sound card will be the pre-amp, and I'm not how well this will work (or whether it's even "safe").

In the case of my studio, my soundcard's digital output is fed into a digital mixer, which is passed onto a 102. Sometimes I take the analog out from the PC straight into the 102, which makes for better sound, but I lose the benefits of the mixer.

For the HTPC, the digital output goes into a Sony AV Receiver, which decodes the signal into whatever multi-channel format applies. I've got the M-Audio 410 (with 10 analog output channels) in case I eventually want to decode the signal with the PC, and then feed it directly into a series of power amps. That may never happen, though.

-=> Mike Hanson <=-

Thanks all for the advice. I was just looking for a set up to monitor while I am making compilation CD’s from my collection.

I am waiting for this http://www.zalman.co.kr/news/2003/20031125_1.htm so mechanical noise won’t be a problem!

Graham.

Not a lad any longer and not from London!

Hmm! more bollox

Very little to compare between my Audiophile 24/95 and Shanling CDT 100 even with 24/96 upsampling!! Just a little more backgroung noise.

Could always use the Audiophile card as an upsampler [ie record LP as 24/96 then save as std 16/44.

And as for using a cheap external ADC, the 24/96 has far better quality ADC chips onboard.

Oh and LL you'll find very little improvement using the Zalman as there's just as much noise emmitted by Power Supply, HDD and Rom-drives

J8hn

No PSU noise from the Zalman case. The PSU is totaly solid state with no fans at all. The drives are 'hung' on resiliant rubber mounts but of course still make some noise.

Graham.

Not a lad any longer and not from London!

PR I listen 2 music and don't brag about my "system". I did mention I have a Shanling CDT-100 so u can assume that the rest of my "system" is of similar/better quality. You'll find it generally acknowledged that the A24/96 is a difficult s/card with flakey drivers etc. Apart from having phono connectors it's not really suitable for hifi/pc use.

LL case sounds v nice couldn'y find any details on the Zalman site other that a jpg press release!!

j8hn

There is a review here :

http://www.nordichardware.com/reviews/cooling/2003/ZalmanTNN500A/

Graham.

Not a lad any longer and not from London!

Intriguingly extrapolated logic there PR and not that remote from the truth. Got quite a shock back comparing my CD63KIsig too [why is it a piece of kit always sounds so good prior to sale?]

I was, in my first post, merely anxious to stress that good s/cards were available to L Lad without spending £150+
.
I also consider PCs [well set up] to be very viable hifi sources.

You've got a 24/96?, try this; rip some cds onto your PC HDD as .wavs using EAC, then play back through your hifi [WMP9 is perfectly adequate for this] and compare against you CDP.

I use a Naim 250 to listen to my PC output.

You will need a pre-amp / mixing desk / some way of controlling the volume - just think of a System Beep or start up sound at full volume after a reset !

I use Carillon - Echo Gina 24 - Mixing desk

and

Home built Althon - Ego-Sys Wami Rack 24 - Mixing Desk.

DS

ITC - Just Jack - Da Hype

J8hn,

Your comments amaze me. You obvioulsy have conviction but lack the words to express it adequately

Anyway, the Audiophile 24/96 is an excellent card, the drivers are stable, it offers considerably better measured performance than the SBLive 5.1 it replaced in my PC and sounds better to boot.

Laughably so in fact.

Factor in the fact that the SBLive 5.1 is INCAPABLE of sampling natively at 44.1 makes it somewhat useless for real-time recording for CD mastering, the on-the-fly sample rate conversion truly messes up the sound.

Running a post-process SRC adds significant time to the process of recording, even on a fast PC, and non-integer SRC also screws with he sound too.

The SBLive has very real measured and sonic problems for high quality audio sampling. The M-Audio or Terratec cards would be my choice for a good solution at sensible money.

As someone who owned a CD63KIs for a number of years that too is very far from being anywhere neare the best in terms of modern CD replay, good player though it is, in isolation.

Andy.

Hi Graham,
if you don't want "bells and whistles", don't waste your money on a sound card. There is an outboard dac which goes straight into usb port which makes all the soundcards I have compared it to, sound positively flat. Try www.xitel.com .
I hope this is of some help,
Pete

Whoah! Just as Pete R and I are beginning to converge on a few things, someone else jumps in with a further load of bollox and pseudo techno gobbledeegook [please excuse my in-articulacy and arid vocabulary here]. Hmm! wish I could just read/believe the spec. sheets and forget about using my ears.

And Aussie Pete; you'll instantly hobble yourself with a USB linked s/card, even if it is USB2, compared to the speed of the PCI bus of an internal s/card.

So, Graham, get yourself a decent soundcard. But like I've said a modest SBlive 5.1 will do you nicely a 24/96 would be nice but it'll cost 5x more.

quote:

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someone else jumps in with a further load of bollox and pseudo techno gobbledeegook

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Was that aimed at me?

By all means feel free to engage in actual discussion about facts, rather than childish 'bollox and pseudo techno gobbledeegook' reponses.

The FACTS I have stated are true, please provide evidence to the contrary. The SBLive's with the EMU10K DSP cannot sample at a native 44.1k and the effect of this is measurable and audible.

Since the original poster is likely to be using CD as source material he will get unacceptable degradation, in my view, from using an SBLive.

The DSP runs fixed at 48 kHz, which means every sound runs through an internal 8 point interpolation at 48 kHz, it's IMPOSSIBLE for the SBLive to pass a non-48kHz sample rate without sample rate conversion and interpolation.

The best results will either be with analogue sampled at 48kHz, or DAE from CD with a seperate software process to up-sample to 48kHz, consuming extra disk space for the raw files and reducing sound quality at the same time.

The SBLive is a GREAT gaming card (I owned three!), but for high quality audio use it is junk.

These are good, for ouptut only: -

http://www.hbl.co.uk/product.asp?ProdID=1032

They used to be available from www.hificables.co.uk, but I can't find it on their website anymore.

Andy.

MAudio cards
I use a Delta 410 on my HCPC, and have made the leap to decoding on board the PC. I run the front channels through my 32.5 preamp, and the surround channels to home built power amps. It all works rather well. There are drivers available for the 410 that give you all the control of a surround amp for speaker distance, etc.

BUT there is one thing to be aware of with the MAudio cards (certainly the 410, and I believe the 24/96). When you turn on the PC, you get a very nasty THUMP through your speakers. To combat this I have had to add relays in the signal path which are switched by the 5v signal from the PC (with a delay circuit so the relays are powered 10 seconds after PC power on). There is still the (not as severe) switch off thump to address, though. Yes, I know this will degrade the signal, but I'd prefer that than bumps and thumps all the time....

One enormous advantage the SBlive 5.1 card does have is that it's software allows line input gain to be varied. So using a phono to mini-jack you can connect from your amp line out and set a record vol of 0Db.

No it doesn't sample at cds native 44.1kHz, but it will still give any of those little plastic usb gizmos a run for their money.

Course if you've got a Laptop then you'll have to go the plastic gizmo route and hope you can set line gain somewhere along the way.

Far from being junk the SB s/card provides reasonable sound quality; Hifi but at £30 not high end nor SOTA but I never said that did I?

I wouldn't recommend hooking a 24/96 straight into a pwr amp, as RH has decovered. Apart from nasties at switch on/off the 24/96 puts out a lot of background hash. Best to hook up via a pre-amp. Richard why not wire up an override switch to your relays to mute the signal b4 switch off?

Re override switch - yes, I've done that, but as it's a manual thing, other family members still have to remember to do it.... generally it's OK though.

quote:

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Originally posted by PR:
j8hn

Not wishing to hound you down word-for-word, but you quoted - "Far from being junk the SB s/card provides reasonable sound quality; Hifi but at £30 not high end nor SOTA but I never said that did I?"

You did imply?

...but I don't blame you, because sometimes on this forum you need to kick in the door, with the hope you can converge at a later date to a sensible discussion without Naim madness.

I'm now going to make an MP3 equal to CD? I'm going to turn the volume off!

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Naim Madness???. this was a discussion about cheap versus expensive soundcards. If you look back over the thread you will see that there is very little mention of Naim. You appear to take any chance to have a sly or not so sly dig at Naim, is this how you get your jollies. It is the Naim Forum after all. I wish I could turn your volume off.

Yours in Music

Syd

Naim madness indead but as has already been said it's their forum. Perhaps we should set up a No-na(i)me forum?

I've had to recap my posts to see what I've said, yep I'm hearing things,fairly subtle differences.
SB almost as good as 24/96, 24/96 almost as good as Shanling; but................SB nearly as good as SB naah! m8.

And I was definately hearing things when my Meridian cdp was blown away by a £150 multiplayer

Pete the ATC route's not for me, apart from the price nothing else about them makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

And as for the Meridian my ears fought my intellect over that and it had to go despite the twin carbs.

An engineer once told me that one had fuel injection come first Webber carbs would have been considered advanced State of the Art.

But give me jet-tronic any day, after all he'd never heard a Shanling; but then I'm forgetting about my Sondek.