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The State of PC Audio
jonesy writes "The Tech Report has put together a pretty decent six-card sound round-up that covers the most popular audio controller chips around. DACs, ADCs, DSPs, and the other important acroymns are explained. One interesting revelation: Creative's Audigy card doesn't do 24-bit/96KHz sound, despite Creative's claims. Gaming benchmarks are provided, and the authors even take a crack at the subjective side of audio, although they seem aware of the difficulties in doing so."
Some of the low-price cards are actually surprisingly good. The SoundBlaster PCI 128 (actually an Ensoniq card) is notorious among some audio freaks because the outputs are of better quality than the much more expensive SoundBlaster Live cards.
The nice thing about this review is that they actually admit their own 'audio quality' test is flawed. That's good, but if you know it, it's stupid to still do it anyway.
Good evaluation of audio and sighted testing don't mix - ever.
--
GCP
Lower distortion (all types). Lower noise. Better anti-aliasing filters. More linear DACs/ADCs. Balanced I/O. Improved RF rejection.
Card volume implemented with motor control pot instead of FETs or digital scaling. Eliminate the
digital EQ that causes phase distortion even when nulled.
Is that enough?
Need better sound out of a laptop? Lots of them do have cheap soundcards. Try USB audio "boxes". Here are a couple from amazon:
Yamaha AP-U70 CAVIT External Audio.... $350 or so. Include a built in amplifier.
or
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Extigy Sound..., for about $134.
I don't know about Linux support, but they will makes a Windows Laptop rock.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Yeah. If you are going to do anything music-related, invest in *studio monitors* .. the Yorkville YM-1s are what I have. A very unbiased sound, set me back about 250$ american, and easily the most important part of my setup after the signal is mixed down and goes out my audio card (Echo MIA).
"Old man yells at systemd"
sorry but the review at Here at pcavtech is dead on.. tests done with audio calibration and testing hardware to give real numbers and real information not this "pull something out of our butt" review.
any review on audio equipment that doesnt use real testing is pure crap and needs to be loudly labelled as such.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Most Audigy users that have looked at any of the sound card forums out there have already discovered their claims are false.
Creative seems to have really dropped the ball with the Audigy line. A look at any audio forums (Creative's own even) will show a large contingent of unhappy customers. Audiophiles that think it's a piece of crap sound-wise, gamers who are pissed off with its driver performance. Calls for people to return their Audigies and get a Game Theatre or Santa Cruz.
Compatibility issues with different hardware configurations, WinXP, etc.. are also popping up. The biggest seems to be an issue where the EEPROM on the card gets scrambled, disabling the rear speakers, and causing the card to be recognized as EMU10K instead of an Audigy, thereby making proper software/driver upgrades impossible for it. The only known solution for this so far is to get the card replaced and hope the new one doesn't get FUBAR as well. There are a lot of very annoyed Audigy owners out there.
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
I had that crackling too when I had a Hauppauge TV tuner in my case and had the SB card right above it. Have you tried moving the SB as far away from the 2nd proc as possible? I'm pretty sure it's not a driver issue, but an electrical interference one.
On April 5th, Philippe Ramelet wrote an article about the Extigy's alleged 24-bit, 96kHz capabilities at Tom's Hardware Guide. Here's the debunking part.
We reserve the right to serve refuse to anyone. -management
You want quality audio in a PC? Go get a card made by these people, these people, these people, these people, these people, or these people. Then we'll talk.
I would only recommend this to musicians or engineers though, since it's a bit of overkill for RTCW.
Recording? Wow! It is absolutely quiet.
Get Pro Tools free from Digidesign. Musicians like Beck, Bjork and Aerosmith use it. Of course, they use the version that's tens of thousands of dollars. Basically, the difference is the more money you spend, the more hardware (and thereby processing power) you get.
The best way to learn is to just start doing it. If you have a sound card and Pro Tools free, you should be able to just start laying down tracks with the mic that came with your computer. Experiment with EQ settings. It's all about training your ear to recognise what sounds good and what doesn't. After you've recorded an album's worth of material, you'll find you're able to make much better sounding songs, though you won't be sure how you got there.
If you don't have a sound card, get one that has at least a stereo input and output. Before you get it, make sure it's supported by whatever software program you're using. If you don't have a firewire port, think about getting one. Firewire is useful in so many ways.
If you want to get some higher fidelity, you'll need to get a decent mic. Pick up a Shure SM57 if you're recording mostly instruments or 58 if it's mostly vocals ($80-100). These mics are workhorses of the industry and will remain useful even after you become a famous rock star. You might be able to find a XLR -> 1/8" adapter to plug the mic into the back of the computer, but I recommend either buying a cheap mixer and going mic -> mixer -> soundcard, or getting Digidesign's mBox ($450), a firewire-based audio input system. The good thing about the mBox is you get a more robust version of the software along with it.
Pro Tools isn't the only way to go, though I think it's the only way that's free. Kruder & Dorfmeister use Cubase, and Thievery Corporation use Cakewalk. I've heard lots of great things about Cubase, but the Cakewalk seems to be more amateurish. Thievery has a crapload of hardware, and I think Cakewalk is just a small part of their studio.
If you're broke, you can always pirate plug-in's from p2p networks, but audio programmers are generally non-rich really cool people, so if you ever wind up making decent money off of your music, you should buy the software you use frequently.
If you're into programming, check out MAX/MSP. Autechre uses it.
Also, check out Propellerheads Software:
Reason- Berklee is using this to teach recording concepts.
Rebirth- 303, 808, 909. Kicks ass.
For a reference, my stuff was recorded using Pro Tools with the Audiomedia III sound card (it's pretty old), a Neumann TLM103 mic and a Roland xp-60 synth, both going into a mackie 1202 mixer. I'm completely self-taught.
c-hack.com |
I'm not surprised creative doesn't use all 24 bits.
24 bit audio in a pc is not really practical as 24-bit audio means an equivalent SNR of 59 dB.
Most sound cards run at 1V Peak, which means one needs a noise floor of around a millivolt or two or less to make this sort of thing practical.
Most measurements of PC system noise are between --50 and -60 dB, there's a fan there and what not. So you cannot really use all 24 bits. The effective number of bits one would get out of a perfect D/A (infinite number of bits) would be somewhere around 22.
That doesn't stop people from advertising 24 bit... 64 bit audio processing. People are familiar with the number of bits in a completely different context, in which they matter much more. 64 bit processing certainly has its advantages over 32 bit, and a 64 bit address bus makes a very big difference. But in this case, you'll have to shield your sound card to get that sort of performance (not impractical).
If anybody is considering buying an Audigy because of the remote, think again. I don't think the article made any mention of the remote (which I believe is only available in the Platinum or better) , but it is just about worthless if used in conjunction with anything else that uses a remote.
I had set up a small tower in my living room, complete with wireless keyboard/mouse and an ATI All-in-wonder, and I upgraded from the SB Live to the Audigy for several reasons- better inputs/outputs mounted on the front were important, but the remote control was extremely important. After all, if I could use this remote to control winamp and other programs (possibly including the ATI TV app), I wouldn't need the keyboard or mouse 90% of the time.
Unfortunately, every other remote I have interfered with the audigy - I couldn't use the DVD player, TV, stereo, or even the PS2 remote without royally pissing off the Audigy Remote app (even when pointing the remotes in the opposite direction, it still picked up signals far more often than the devices that were supposed to get the signal). Ironically, the Audigy remote caused the least amount of response from the Audigy, and no problems with the rest of the entertainment center. And the Audigy Remote app is such a horribly bloated app that I had to disable it entirely (which is almost as difficult to do as disabling RealPlayer or removing all the AOL icons).
I like the sound that comes out of the card, I like the 1/4" input jacks (which lets you plug a guitar directly in the front, for example), and I like the fact that there are so many controls and inputs that are mounted on the front (with the platinum version). But the remote was such a disappointment; don't buy this card for that feature - you may get better results, but don't raise your hopes.
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