Slashdot Mirror
New External Sound "Card"
(startx) writes: "Well, it looks like creative has done it again. This time they've created an external sound"card" that connects through usb to your computer or laptop. It's called the Extigy, and looking at the specs, it appears as though it's got every possible audio connector you can possibly think of, along with the standard ir port with remote control. With this, a usb HDD, and a usb cd-rw, it looks like I can have most of my box, outside the box, just for the geek factor :-)" I don't think it's quite as cool-looking as the Stereolink 1200 (which I've never actually heard), but for a few bucks more the Creative crams in a lot of features.
I've been looking for something like this for a while. Not to get my connectors externally, that's not an issue (I can get any extensions I like). To me, the key issue here is that the sound-generating circuits get out of the RF-wise nightmarish environment inside a computer case. There's so much induction going on you simply don't want to generate sound there.
So this is definitely something for my next desktop.
Sound systems like this allow one to add high-quality sound support for custom systems that do not have a conventional form factor that allows for a PCI-capable motherboard, for example, apps that are built around PC/104. Nice stuff.
Now I only need a cheap laptop with USB, and I have quality streaming MP3 home stereo. Maybe I get this small Sony with the touchscreen, should be easy to make touchscreen-based song selector... hmm...
J.
This is perfect, optical for my minidisc, connector for my headphones, sp/dif for my speakers. This is a great idea and it will be so nice to have all the connectors up front rather than at the back of the pc below the desk. I assume it is built to sit under a monitor (had a power bar like that once). A little on the pricy side though.
No, because these fucked CDs mess up the digital output (at least Cactus Data Shield does on my Yamaha CD player with optical out) - it inserts 'new track' signals every second or so...
It certainly stops recording to minidisc via optical, anyway
My G4 Cube already has something like this, albeit to a lesser extent. it connects to the USB port on my cube and OSX and OS9 just KNOW what to do with it. Wish it had all those cool doodads tho =]
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
I thought this was rather odd but the requirements page says "Geniune Intel Pentium" and doesn't say anything else. Now I would assume it would work on anything of course.
Instead of taking up a drive bay for the Live! Drive and conecting it via an IDE cable to the Soundblaster in your PCI slot which in turn hooks into your digital decoder for Dolby digital.. plus 3 separate device drivers for each one and separate software apps to drive em and and and...
Now you've got one USB device that is more portable, cheaper and easier to fabricate/package/sell than the 3 individual items, and as an added bonus gets them into the laptop market outside of their existing OEM soundchip customers.
If that's not the definition of a damned smart convergence device I need to smoke better quality crack.
Do not taunt Happy-Fun Ball
1. Start with 4 balanced inputs, each one with its own super-shielded A/D converter. (Possibly increase to 24 inputs for studio models.)
2. Instead of having an analog mixer, write all four of the streams from the four inputs to the hard drive at 16bit/44kbps ("CD quality"). All the mixing can then be done digitally, after the recording session is done. This is what musicians are used to from the bad old analog days when we all had a 4- or 8-track in our garage: we jam first, and then take our time mixing the multiple tracks down to 2, applying whatever effects necessary to get it to sound right.
Current amateur gear for the computer (like this box) requires you to record two tracks (L/R) at a time, and most bands don't work that way. This either forces you to mix the whole band as you record, but then you can't turn up the drums or equalize the bass after the recording is done, because they're all mashed together. If you want that sort of control, you have to record the drums alone (playing to a metronome), then the bass, then one guitar, etc. This process really kills the joy of home recording, and it kills any band chemistry that would come through if you played "live."
The obvious solution is to allow the simultaneous writing of more than two tracks to the hard drive. That way, you can play live but also adjust the individual instruments in the mixdown.
I'm sure tools like this exist, but they're made for studios or pros. But, there is no reason why the thing I describe would have to be expensive. Really, it shouldn't be more expensive than this external Sound Blaster, because the base model doesn't need all the fancy in/out MIDI and optical stuff. I know I would pay about $250 for the contraption, and I'm poor. If I can afford it, many people can. There is no way it would cost that much to make.
The only question is how many tracks USB can carry before it's saturated. Since it appears it can carry two at 24bit/96kbps, it should carry at least four at 16bit/44kbps. That would be enough for me. It may well be that any more than this would require SCSI or Firewire. Maybe also RAID. Fine. None of these things are out of the reach of almost-ordinary joes anymore.
Now if I could get my basement tuned to give good sound and rent some pro microphones (and maybe a mixer), I'd have a home studio as good as any other.
it's got every possible audio connector you can possibly think of
/out
No BNC
No Firewire
No Gate / CV
No Clock
No Balanced XLRs
No SMTPE in/out
No PHONO in
No MIDI Thru
While the parent post is obviously a bit over-the-top, it isn't entirely untrue...
I hacked a Netpliance I-Opener, connected a USB hub, D-Link network adapter, a canon USB inkjet printer and an Iomega ZIP CD-R drive to it. This setup isn't exactly trouble-free:
The network adapter dies after a few days up uptime and needs to be unplugged and plugged back in to get it working again.
Uploads from the I-Opener to another system through the adapter become corrupted.
Replaced the adapter and the problems still remained, according to the message boards at http://www.linux-hacker.net, this is a common problem relating to VIA's (the chipset the I-Opener uses) MVP4 USB implentation. Yuck.
The printer every once in awhile just decides to lose connection with the I-Opener. Luckily, it doesn't happen often so it's not a huge concern. I imagine it is also related to the VIA USB controller problem.
The ZIP CD-RW drive works fine.
Of course, I'd be judging USB badly if I just mentioned how a few devices misfunctioned connected to a modified Internet appliance... Except, I've had trouble with USB devices on my ASUSm motherboard BX chipset PIII 850 system as well as on a IMac.
The PIII seems to hate USB mice. Everything else worsk great - USB mice just never show up... Go figure.
Most common problem on the iMac is that devices simply will not show up until you disconnect and reconnect them a few times. Most notably, this applies to my Canon scanner and my Microsoft cheap-ass sidewinder joystick. The scanner usually works after two tries, the joystick - that's a different story; sometimes I give up before I can get the computer to recognize it.
Overall, USB seems to be a general pain in the ass - I'd gladly buy internal cards over ANTHING USB whenever possible.
---
Siggy, siggy, siggy, can't you see? Sometimes your puns just irritate me.
Yikes! why are you crippling your musicians with laptops? get the portable case that has the LCD built in, then you can plop in any motherboard, any pci card, any storage and even give them a cd-burner and a dvd drive.
and you can give them a sound card that will allow them to record 4 tracks like a pro recording setup with quality that makes any creative product sound like a toy...
The Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. do a search for computer case wholesalers, they carry both the portable and the ultra monster towers and everything in between. What made me think of this was that I just refurbed one of these portable computers at work.. Upgraded it from a P-II 233 to a 1.4G P-IV and Ultra 160 SCSI... (we use it for video editing ala portable AVID technology) for less than $700.00.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
My own limited experience with USB sound devices (speakers in this case, altec lansing) has been pretty miserable (LOOK! YOU JUST PLUGGED IN A NEW USB DEVICE! over and over every few hours) but then, it was on a friend's computer, using a variant of the windows virus.
But that aside, I have a technical problem... how EXACTLY is the audio data moving from the PC to this device? I mean what format? How much of your precious 12mbps USB capacity is it using? If not much, then I must assume some compression? Lossy? What about lag? I'd like to see someone play a DVD movie and watch the mouths of the people and see if they sync with the sound. The ONLY POSSIBLE WAY it could sync would be if the DVD player "knew" to delay the vid for 0.08 seconds or something. This is unlikely to be the case with MOST audio/video applications.
All in all, I see this as just another thing ported to USB "just because they can." You can have your lower-sound-quality-and/or-delayed-signal toy. Leave me my good old fashioned built-into-the-hardware synced-with-the-bus sound card, thank you.
What is seen as a good idea here can be extended.
There are various facets in use in the market today, in one form or another....... i.e.
"PC monitors that detach and become portable touch-screen tablets, allowing users to roam the house reading E-mail and accessing other information stored on a PC"
and of course this threads story on extigy
........in what is described below:
(replace "Linux system" where you see "amiga"!!!!)
Enclosures
Image of a modular system
another description of the image (note Raritan is not what it was in 1997 - which was a injection molding case manufacture)
and another perspective
Certainly a musician would find it beneficial to be able to add as many channels (actual hardware modules) into his processing/recording mix system.
pronoblem
Are we staring into a bleak future of music protected by what are in fact USB serialized dongles masquerading as sound cards? Or am I just paranoid (note: that's a rhetorical question)?
Another proud carrier of the $rtbl flag
If they're targetting gamers, it seems a little odd that they would replace the standard game/midi port with the 5-pin DINs - which you can't plug a joystick into. I suppose they're thinking that usb joystick/gamepad is the way to go, but I really like my game pads as they are. On the other hand, having proper midi connectors makes it seem like they're taking musicians seriously again...
Frequencies greater than 20khz can produce resonant tones in the room that can be heard. But that isn't important.
Digital audio is poorly designed. According to the Nyquist theorem you refer to, 48khz is enough to reproduce 24khz audio signals, IF the phase of each frequency is known. Otherwise you could have a 24khz sine wave that is coincidentally sampled only on the 0 amplitude points which would make it be recorded as silence. To make up for this problem, higher frequency rates are needed. If you are sampling at 96khz, then for a 24khz sine wave, there is no possible way to only be sampleing it at the 0 amplitude points since you would be sampleing the wave 4 times per cycle. 192hz also shows up, and that is still only sampling a 24khz wave 8 time a cycle.
A superior system would be delta sigma modulation (google it for additional information) which uses 1 bit encoding with typically something like a 2.8mhz sampling rate for a frequency responce range approaching 100khz.
As to the proper number of bit for PCM, the big problem is that we hear volume logrithmically but currently digital audio records linearly. So while for high and moderate volume, more bits are deemed unhearable, but for very quite things (like quiet passages in classical music), the extra bits come in handy very quickly. The extra bits are also very handy for DSP type tasks, although one could arguably truncate them after processing if they think the log argument is BS.
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.