DAL CardDeLuxe PCI card -- any good ?

Posted by: JamH on 25 October 2008

I asked this question before [maybe a year ago ? on the hi-fi forum] but with the distributed audio forum I am asking it again ...

Has anyone any experience of the card

digitalaudio

It is an internal PCI card .. I am interested in it for recording vinyl but might even try it for CD playback ..

Its 400 US dollars ...

How does it compare with the Echo MIA which I already have ..

Thanks

James H.

P.S. It won a Stereophile award a few years ago.

ends==

Posted on: 26 October 2008 by ferenc

I do not know this card, but if you want something which is really well known and respected by the pro audio industry, you should have to take a look at the Lynx cards. You can find a used Lynx One or a new L22 or Lynx Two for a bit more than the mentioned price range, but the quality is well known at least.

Posted on: 27 October 2008 by gone

I've been using CardDeluxes for many years and it's a great card for the money - I think DAL reduced the price a while back to make it even better value. Check UK availability, as I think lack of ROHS compliance dried up supplies for a while.
We had a few glitches with PC BIOSes at one point (Dell/HP were the culprits) but now they're fixed. The DAL tech support guys are very responsive. There's also an AES/EBU breakout bracket for it.
I'd also recommend the Lynx Cards, but normally only if you want more than two channels - you can also piggy-back two CardDeluxes if you need that
One fly in the ointment is the slow phasing-out of vanilla PCI slots on motherboards, so make sure you've got somewhere to plug it into!
Cheers
John

Posted on: 30 October 2008 by JamH

Thanks for the advice -- I will check the availability of the card and the price in Europe ... James H.