Subject: [linux-audio-user] A nice PCI audio card for the PC?
From: Malcolm Baldridge (linux-audio_AT_paypc.com)
Date: Mon Jun 21 2004 - 01:45:22 EEST
Egads, I know I'm being a bit lazy and irresponsible tossing such a basic
question into this list, but I'm hoping to cut through most of the forest
of data to hone in to the right area.
I think I'm "done" with messing about with various motherboard audio
hardware - it's pretty noisy and has quite a few limitations I'm starting
to find annoying.
I have a (genuine) Aureal A3D Vortex2 PCI card in my stockpile of hardware,
but the support on both Wintendo and Linux seems iffy at best.
I have modest requirements:
1) Stereo in/out's fine, but multi-channel output is a pure bonus.
2) It should be as clean as practical - I realise outboard DAC/ADC is the
way to go if the godliness of Clean is sought, but I don't need better than
a -93dB noise floor.
3) It should have reprogrammable bitclocks so that resampling is not
necessary at any bitrate of sampling OR playback. Creative Labs seems to
have gone the way of fixed-rates and overrelies on DSP hardware to "patch
up" support for various user configurable bitrates. 96KHz support would be
awesome, but 48K wouldn't be a problem. Likewise, with sample sizes, 16's
all I need, but 20 or 24 would be awesome.
4) Intelligent and flexible audio-routing [monitoring would be nice, but
isn't required] so that I don't have minefields of which channels are
shadowed to which channels when recording from LINE OUT. I ran into so
real minefields with some motherboard chipsets where it was quite difficult
to record LINE IN audio without having LINE OUT audio mixed in with it.
5) Rich and excellent ALSA support, of course.
6) It should be a well-performing card with good bus-mastering DMA support
so driving it doesn't take too many CPU cycles.
I've seen Turtle Beach hardware on sale for reasonable prices, and a
generally positive writeup on these in various ALSA groups. How are they
for audio quality and performance?
7) Under US$200 price tag. Preferably under US$100.
Am I asking for something that exists? Thanks for your patience.
=MB=
PS: My negative bias against Creative Labs is not cast in stone - if my
impressions or perceptions are mistaken, I'm happy to correct them.
PPS: The Hammerfall cards look *AWESOME*, however I sense they are way over
my price range.
-- A focus on Quality.
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