New External Sound "Card" 347
(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.
Notebook sound (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Notebook sound (Score:2)
By the way what is "100dB SNR clarity". good sound? or good golden ear sound? ^g^g
Re:Notebook sound (Score:5, Insightful)
I hadda chuckle though, the heading here says "any audio connector you can think of".... No balanced 1/4", no XLR, no bantam jacks, not to mention no external 5 pin DIN for midi. Still, not bad for consumer gear
Re:Notebook sound (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Notebook sound (Score:2, Informative)
I have to disagree. Reel-to-reel tape may have a SNR of 105 dB, but plain ole' cassette tape has a much lower SNR, around 60-70 dB IIRC.
CD's have a dynamic range of 96 dB, and a typical SNR of 90+ dB.
105 dB SNR is golden ear good.
Re:Notebook sound (Score:2)
For cd players, there are some decks that have incredibly_ SNR like the Nakamichi Dragon [nakamichi.com].
Re:Notebook sound (Score:2)
SBLive! cards were not exactly known for their clean sound, but as this is outside the noisy box on a separate power supply, it stands a better chance of actually sounding decent.
Sure there's no balanced connectors, but this isn't exactly a professional-level device. But one connector I looked for immediately & failed to see is an RCA S/PDIF out. How am I supposed to run a digital connection to my 5.1 amp downstairs - find a 40 ft optical cable? Stupid to leave off such a cheap & useful connector.
Re:Notebook sound (Score:2, Informative)
Telephone 35db
Phonograph 45db
Cassette Tape 73db
VCR Audio 86db
CD 96db
SB Extigy 100db
DTS Audio Disk 120db
DVD Player 144db
That means - there's better out there, but for a computer? Not too shabby. (of course, as was pointed out before, it is only theoretical - or is it? Creative claims >=100 not 100. Sounds to me like they mean in practice.)
Re:Notebook sound (Score:2)
Really? What deck and what tape? I'd really like to hear 105db on a consumer tape deck.
It does have MIDI, but yeah, no balanced guzzintas or guzouttas. Its not a piece of pro gear. I'd love to see something like this that uses 1394 and has multiple digital and balanced connectors. That really would be cool.
Re:Notebook sound (Score:2)
No AES/EBU either, but this is a CONSUMER-level product. Maybe pro-sumer, but definitely not professional.
If you want that sort of high-end stuff, you might want to look, oh, here [sony.com], for example...
Re:Notebook sound (Score:2)
60dB is a reasonable power range for truly high-fidelity audio. That's a 1,000,000:1 power ratio - or a milliwatt to a kilowatt of power, to produce normal program levels. Very few amps produce a kilowatt of power, and those that do aren't real good at doing a milliwatt. And even if the amp can pull it off, most speakers other than high-quality horns will crap out (or blow out) long before then. So a *really good* system might do 40dB dynamic range (10,000:1 ratio) decently. Brutally clip or compress 10dB of peak, and lose 10dB of low-level detail. Your typical "home theatre" stereo crap is in the 20-30dB range, which basically means it is constantly clipping or recovering from clipping, and much of the low-level detail is lost.
The reason for the distinct "sound" of most audio equipment isn't SNR or THD or bandwidth, but rather how it recovers from overload conditions and how much low-level signal it loses. This stuff isn't easy to measure (it's much easier to analyze static signals than dynamic ones), so they produce the numbers that look good instead and claim that this somehow represents quality. When is the last time you saw THD measurements for a speaker? They don't do that, because 10% THD is really good behavior for a speaker, and that looks bad next to the
Re:"every possible audio connector"? No. I want XL (Score:2)
I would imagine that there is a burgeoning market for audiophile sound cards; solid engineering and impeccable quality are more important to me than "3D Simulation" or "32 voices" or any of the other crap that the marketing department invents.
I'd like to disagree. An audiophile-class soundcard just doesn't justify the cost which hardware manufacturers would put on it, and doesn't really find much of a practical application for most end-users. The mainstream can't tell the difference between an mp3 sampled at 128kb/s and one sampled at 196 or 256, and the marginal increase in quality doesn't really justify the space and expense of a better card.
However, as an avid gamer, I can attest that positional 3d sound, especially in first-person style games, adds a great deal to the experience and can improve gameplay, especially in games like counter-strike, where one overly loud footstep can mean sudden death.
I'm not knocking your hardware hacking skills, I'm just saying that high-end audio cards would, like most other audiophile equipment, be a niche market at best, and the stuff you dismiss casually as marketing crap appeals to a wider market than audiophile would, which means more dollars for the card manufactuers.
USB sound is pretty old (Score:3, Informative)
Re:USB sound is pretty old (Score:4, Informative)
They recently reissued it as the Edirol UA-3 [edirolextra.com] and added a more upscale 1/3 rack desktop model, the UA-5.
There have also been a stream of no-brand import USB sound devices from Taiwan over the last couple of years, but finding one when you needed it could be difficult.
Based on past performance, Creative's product will probably be less than perfect, but it'll be nice to have another option.
For the person who asked about Firewire - Stereo audio bitrates are fine for USB, you just need to have a little buffering in the device. I think the reason nobody's bother to put a 1394 chipset in an external sound box is that if you have Firewire you probably already have decent sound. This may change, or with USB 2.0 it may not.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is going to sell (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This is going to sell (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:This is going to sell (Score:2)
During the "Lunchbox PC" discussion a couple of days ago the soundcard was brought up as an important factor, and several people mentioned getting an external USB D/A converter. I was intrigued and went looking to find that there are quite a few [audiomidi.com] options [edirol.com] out there right now already, and this Creative entry is just yet another addition to the selection list. Note that Creative would probably be the last company most musicians would look to as a leader in the high fidelity audio field.
While many people have rightly mentioned that USB has ample bandwidth for 2-channel audio (though even that at 96Khz/24bits hits 4.6Mbps - 96000 * 24 * 2): Note that this device claims Dolby Digital 5.1 -> Now I don't know if they do the decoding in the external box, or if they actually send 6 streams, but if they send six separate streams that's about 13.8Mbps (and of course USB is limited to 11Mbps). Just something to consider. It is a fair statement to say that Firewire or USB2 (it is just USB1 isn't it?) would make me feel a lot more comfortable about the unrestrained capabilities.
Re: There are better ways! (Score:2)
I just dislike anything USB, for starters. That port doesn't have lots of bandwidth, for one thing. Couple that with everything under the sun wanting to share your USB connection, and it spells major trouble for low-latency sound.
Also, why give a musician a relatively fragile laptop? IMO, a poor hack of a solution. The ideal answer is building a PC in a rack-mount case, and installing it in a rack along-side any effects processors or rack-mount synths/samplers they might own.
You can buy a MIDI "surface controller" to get pads, knobs, and sliders galore which can be defined so you can work anything you'd normally have to drag or click around on with a mouse. (Eliminating all need for a mouse is the most important step to getting a PC on stage as music equipment.)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
No more horrible RF & induction... (Score:5, Interesting)
So this is definitely something for my next desktop.
Re:No more horrible RF & induction... (Score:4, Interesting)
In addition, the specs on the web page do not mention if it is possible to sync to digital signal sources (and do all the processing with this signal rate). If all internal processing is locked to 96 kHz, the quality in the more useful modes is probably less than optimal.
Uses (Score:3)
This might be a good answer to This [slashdot.org] question.
Re:Uses (Score:2)
Interesting apps for customized systems (Score:2, Interesting)
Optical-In (Score:3, Informative)
I'm no expert with current sound cards, but it has that optical line in. Wouldn't that be the best way to 'back up' those pesky CD's with copy protection?
Re:Optical-In (Score:4, Interesting)
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
Re:Optical-In (Score:2, Informative)
Raymond
Just what I was looking for! (Score:2, Interesting)
J.
USB or 1394 (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems to me that USB is being overstretched, together with ATA and after RS-232C and IEEE 1284... all of the stuff done by ATA, RS-232C and 1284 should be done by SCSI and 1394, and so much of the stuff currently being done with USB.
Re:USB or 1394 (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyhow, if you want a 1394 interface, check out MOTU [motu.com]. They have some killer audio interfaces for 1394.
Re:USB or 1394 (Score:2)
Re:USB or 1394 (Score:2)
Firewire's easy to use too. Plug and pray...
Re:USB or 1394 (Score:3, Informative)
Wonder how strong it is? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wonder how strong it is? (Score:3, Informative)
Grab.
Re:Wonder how strong it is? (Score:2)
Latency ? (Score:2)
Pity, Creative web site didn't give this info in their specs.
Re:Latency ? (Score:2, Informative)
Oh wow, exactly what I need (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Oh wow, exactly what I need (Score:2)
1/4-inch Haedphone output jack w/ volume control from http://us.hercules.com/products/techspec.php3?id=
Do you know how hard it is to find a Haedphone jack nowadays
Cube (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cube (Score:2)
BTW: that external soundcard for your cube will work in Linux, not just on your mac.. but also with non-apple hardware.
And the top "insightfully funny" comments are: (Score:5, Funny)
2) Where's the FUFMe port!
3) D00d! With all these different ports, there's just GOTTA be a way to rip those copy-protected CDs!
woof.
Karma cap: te only way to go is down. Otherwise there's no point in writing another Score:5 post!
Requirements only lists "Intel Pentium", no AMD (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Requirements only lists "Intel Pentium", no AMD (Score:2, Informative)
It was a software patch that as far as i remember didnt work 100% satisfactorally for someone buying a card of its quality at the time, so buyer beware, this may be the same case here.
"time is never wasted when your wasted all the time!"
It's Creative's "Killer Convergence" device (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:It's Creative's "Killer Convergence" device (Score:2)
When will we see real IEC958 support...? (Score:2)
supports software control of IEC958 subcode
information. Vendors seem to think that
implementing "just enough" of the standard to
allow AC-3 output is sufficient.
So stuff like track marking on your minidisc
recorder end up being miserable hacks "flashing"
the TOSLINK output to insert a track mark. This
breaks to various degrees on different minidisc
recorders, resulting in anything from missing the
first few seconds of the next track, missing the
last few seconds of the last track, and the
inability to do seamless run-on tracks where a
song (or dialogue) spans multiple tracks. Using
preroll doesn't always work either, some recorders
will happily record the preroll as silence.
I won't even go into the mangling most devices
do with locking the output at 48khz, thus forcing
44khz source material to be resampled on output.
Maybe the Extigy got it right this time, and
allows software control of subcode information
so REAL track marking can be done, and allows
real 44khz output without resampling.
I'm not betting on it though
I want multiple tracks! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:I want multiple tracks! (Score:4, Informative)
there are plenty of these products on the market, check these out
plus you don't want to use a consumer card for recording multiple tracks
More Computer Audio hardware [marsmusic.com]
Tascam US428 [bhphotovideo.com]
M Audio(TM) Delta 1010 Logic System [marsmusic.com]
Roland® Studio Pack [marsmusic.com]
Aardvark(TM) Direct Pro Q10 Studio Nerve Center [marsmusic.com]
Aardvark(TM) Direct Pro 24/96 Pro Studio Package [marsmusic.com]
it's really not consumer.. or pro... this stuff... "prosumer" (how i hate that word)
Re:I want multiple tracks! (Score:2)
I read the FAQ on the Tascam unit and they say USB can handle 6 channels, though not at 96kbps. That's a pretty low ceiling for any semi-serious musician, but for me, it's plenty. It would be great to just find a box with 6 XLR inputs and a USB plug. That sort of thing could be dirt cheap if you used shielded "consumer" A/D converters like on a high-end Sound Blaster. It would also be tons of fun to play with.
Re:I want multiple tracks! (Score:2)
Re:I want multiple tracks! (Score:3, Interesting)
better makes it seem like it's better than it really is. The higher bitrate is a definite improvement though.
Multiple Sound Cards (Score:2)
Re:Multiple Sound Cards (Yes, you can!) (Score:2)
Maybe, but maybe not (Score:3, Informative)
The problem is that sound cards do not always record at the exact same frequencies. Normally this is fine, because every channel is being recorded at the same rate -- in synch with every other channel you are recording. If you put two cards into your box and their sampling frequencies deviate enough, by the end of a song, the two streams may have de-synchronized a noticeable amount.
Re:I want multiple tracks! (Score:2)
Grab.
Re:I want multiple tracks! (Score:2)
OK shoot me if I'me being stupid, but what about having several normal stereo soundcards? I have seen some recording software that claims to support multiple devices at once, wouldn't this do your job?
Re:I want multiple tracks! (Score:2)
I use the optical in to add another 8 channels from a cheap digital mixer with an optical out (the Fostex VM88). All this runs through a proprietary PCI card. A buddy just got the Layla with the new PCMCIA card instead of a PCI card, for his laptop. Both models can be found for $699.
Echo's products also come with a very nice software digital mixer, which allow you to mix any input to any output. Recording software such as Sonar works well for recording multiple channels at once, at 24bit/96kHz (although I only use 44kHz).
Personally, I suspect that Echo has a far better product than Creative (largely because of the USB), but I haven't seen the price on the Extigy yet.
Re:M-Audio Delta 44--great tip! (Score:3, Insightful)
After looking at the available stuff and reading up on USB latency, I'm convinced that the PCI card+breakout box with D/A-A/D converters is the optimal setup. I wish this architecture would make its way into more "mass production" sound cards so the prices could start falling.
I guess I was silly to think that I had satisfied all of toy cravings in December...
Slashdot editors!!! (Score:2)
What worries me most is what browser is everyone that has posted comments using if they haven't noticed this??
Re:Slashdot editors!!! (Score:2)
I know, I know, should have used the preview button..
every possible audio connector? (Score:2)
Why didn't they make it a bit more useful or offer a better version, something with a 2-4 channel mixer built into it? a real microphone preamp?
and my biggest question is have the solved the noise problems on the digital inputs that has plagued Creative products from the beginning?
Latency issues? (Score:2)
I've done (or tried to do) a fair bit of digital sound work using a SoundBlaster Live Platinum card, and, like most musicians using that card, have been very dissapointed by the sound quality. One of the issues is noise generated from interference within the case, and many musicians use external gear for just this reason. The Extigy type card could solve that problem beautifully in theory.
However, I'm wondering that the impact of USB will be on latency. IIRC, the first generation of external cards still used a PCI slot to connect the external gear to the CPU.
For example, their Audigy Platinum card supports ASIO (Audio Stream Input Output) for low-latency access, but I don't see the same thing on the Extigy.
Of course, Extigy doesn't appear to support Firewire (or as Creative calls it, SB1394) on this card either. But it looks like they could make a strong move into the high-end amateur musician market if USB isn't a bottleneck and they add the Audigy-type features to this one. And oddly I didn't notice SoundFont on their feature list...
And before someone else points it out, yes I realize that there is something inherently silly about running Firewire _in_ to an external box connected to the machine via USB.
Re:Latency issues? (Score:2)
Linux music system component (Score:2)
The laptop isn't fast enough to run KDE (I've tried installing SUSE6.2 on it but it's far too slow). All I want is a minimal distribution that allows me to do what I describe above and looks reasonably pretty. Does such a thing exist? Any help would be appreciated.
All that stuff but it's missing.. (Score:2)
Having real DIN MIDI connections is nice however for the MIDI musicians.
Professional Sound (Score:2)
MIDIMAN Audio Quattro [midiman.com]
and/or
EMagic EMI 2|6 [emagic.de]
for the real professional on the road with a laptop.
USB drives will not work without a PC (Score:2, Informative)
One of the major differences between USB & 1394 is that USB uses a master/slave configuration whereas 1394 is peer to peer. The implications of this are that you cannot connect USB slave devices without a master. I can connect my 1394 DV camera to my 1394 hard drive & copy data to & fro, but it is impossible (as yet) to do the same with USB because they would almost certainly be implemented as USB slaves. For the same reason, I cannot hook up 2 Ipaqs and transfer direct over USB.
This and not latency is why I'm waiting for a similar device with 1394 instead of USB.
USB 2.0 is supposed to implement peer to peer à la 1394, but I'll believe it when I can see, and play with it with my own hands.
Pat
But isn't USB BAD for audio? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:But isn't USB BAD for audio? (Score:2)
I've been using Microsoft's USB speakers for about three years now, and the sound is crystal clear with no lag. I also don't get any annoying USB messages, so your friends speakers/install must have been screwed up.
I don't know how much bandwidth it uses, but I don't seem to have a problem using my USB mouse, keyboard, and flash reader at the same time as listening to music.
I don't think you're giving USB enough credit...
Re:But isn't USB BAD for audio? (Score:2)
There's 650MBytes of space on a 74 minute CD. That's 8.8MBytes per minute of data, or
Re:But isn't USB BAD for audio? (Score:2)
Another step in the direction of modularity (Score:3, Interesting)
There are various facets in use in the market today, in one form or another....... i.e.
"PC monitors that detach [informationweek.com] 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 [soundblaster.com]
........in what is described below:
(replace "Linux system" where you see "amiga"!!!!)
Enclosures [mindspring.com]
Image of a modular system [mindspring.com]
another description of the image [mindspring.com] (note Raritan is not what it was in 1997 - which was a injection molding case manufacture)
and another perspective [mindspring.com]
Certainly a musician would find it beneficial to be able to add as many channels (actual hardware modules) into his processing/recording mix system.
Now if I can just seperate my channels... (Score:2)
I have a couple old sun-3s that I use as xterms from time to time (hosted off a faster machine with usb). Would be nice to give them sound, instead of all sounds coming through the main computers' speakers.
Then I just gotta figgure out how to connect a usb mouse to the remote x-terminal instead of the local machine. I'm sure it is possibla, but I fear i'll have to write some code to do it.
Wow. (Score:3, Interesting)
So . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
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)?
This functionality is not new (Score:2, Informative)
One important thing missing... (Score:2, Interesting)
Computing Future. (Score:2)
Soon we will get computers in components - one thin case with the MB, processor and memory [etc]. 10 USB ports and then you customize... want sound? BAM! Want network? BAM!
Sounds good at first but then I look at all those wires connecting my stereo it scares me. Maybe we'll start getting rack mountable hardware and a rack to make our own 'case'.
Question though: Can I hook up two computers that have USB ports? That would be the killer app... not sound cards, though this looks spiffy.
But the price is a bit much, even the nice one on Thinkgeek is a little high. Will we see lower end soundcards?
Does nobody here know anything about this stuff? (Score:5, Insightful)
- devices like this have existed for more
than 2 years. products from Midiman,
SEK'D, Event Systems and other companies
offered this kind of configuration for
some time. its becoming more common
all the time.
- creative's audio products are widely
recognized by anyone with any experience
as being basically "just good enough" crap. they have terrible noise problems, and often come with basic h/w engineering problems (such as a fixed rate sample clock that forces resampling at any rate other than the chosen one).
- USB for audio is a bunch of crap. It can be
made to work, but its being used only because
most computers these days come with USB ports,
and far fewer come with IEEE1394 ports. It has no redeeming qualities and many drawbacks. There
are bandwidth problems, reliability problems, connector stability problems, protocol conformance problems - it goes on and on.
- IEEE1394 ("firewire") is vastly superior, but suffers from a lack of standardization on the
transport-level protocol used for audio and MIDI
data. There are at least 3 or 4 competing versions of this, with no resolution in sight.
- Several people have pointed out the lack of
balanced connectors, as well as the lack of XLR
connectors (these two items are strictly orthogonal from one another). Balanced analog I/O is a serious must-have for anything other than
the typical low-quality audio stuff 95% of you
do with your computers. Of course, that 5% might not be a big enough market to make it worth offering
:)
companies like creative are busy trying to make devices that appeal to many consumer's desire for stuff that appears to be "pro" or "semi-pro" gear. creative in particular has failed to make any equipment that even comes close to these descriptions. if audio on your computer matters to you enough that external converters are important, you should not be paying any attention to the extigy, but should instead be paying attention to products from Terratech, Event (even though they refuse to make linux support possible, they are nice devices), Midiman (Delta series) or RME. If you're really serious about audio on your computer, you'd already know that you should be basically buying an audio interface that supports ADAT optical connections and then a totally separate converter box (such as the Tango24 from Frontier Designs, or the ADI series from RME, or if money is tight, perhaps a Fostex unit). this configuration allows you to upgrade your A/D-D/A capabilities and the audio interface independently, which in turn implies the potential for improved channel counts and/or improved converters at a later date. --pRe:Does nobody here know anything about this stuff (Score:2)
Yawn. (Score:2)
USB audio device. Are the people here looking
for "musical laptop solutions" that bad
at researching peripherals? Is it that much of a
slow news day that a minor product announcement
is headlining news?
Roland's UA-30 (years old, and cheap!) has
*more outputs* than this silly thing (from the
data sheet, the Exigy doesn't even have SPDIF
outs!) and a better interface. It's mainstream
enough that if you plug it into a Mac or a Win2k+
box, it'll just work.
All Very Well and Good, But... (Score:2)
Additionally, how does it perform while, say, scanning an image on a USB scanner, or while performing heavy mousing on a USB mouse, while playing Quake?
Other than looking like a nifty ad for the device, how about providing solid (and useful) information?
BEWARE!!!!! Creative and SPD/IF Digital I/O (Score:3, Informative)
Some of their soundblaster cards have a digital I/O port -- labelled SPDIF, and in fact, if you connect a DAT deck to the digital I/O port, it will pass a signal.
However, the card does not pass the digital data. Instead, it converts it to analog, then resamples it to digital!
I didn't believe this at first, but I did the test -- I created a
When I used the SPD/IF inputs on the Creative soundcard, it was obvious that the signal was being passed through an D/A/D iteration. The signal was extremely distorted and noisy. It wasn't a square wave anymore!
I don't know whether or not this particular device has the same problem, but anyone who is looking for a device for performing accurate digital I/O transfer should BEWARE!
I'd be carefull. (Score:2)
For those of you who don't remember, the SBLive! from Creative had a lot of problems with a lot of different configurations. They tended to saturate the PCI bus and broke the PCI2 standard resulting in compatibility issues with all kinds of other devices, including motherboards with "independant" chipsets like Via.
I hope they have a better approach for their USB design. The last thing I need is a soundcard that upsets the rest of my USB devices.
"Creative has done it again?" (Score:2, Informative)
the event ez bus [event1.com]
edirol UA-5 [edirol.com]
wamibox [tracertek.com]
digigram vxpocket [digigram.com]
RME hammerfall [217.160.62.224]
I don't know how people never bothered to notice any of these. Some of these are even very high quality (the RME and the VXpocket are both for pro audio) and are great laptop sound solutions.
Re:Fodder (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Fodder (Score:2)
I bought a pci usb card for my sister's computer.. attached mice, scanner (hp3300), and a printer. No problem.
One machine of mine has an AMD Viper chipset, due to a bug in the chipset.. it will cause my system to do a hard reboot occasionally. I use a mouse on this system with no problems, but my handspring visor will historically crash it quite quickly.
Pentium II, Intel chipset. No problems at all, tried the Visor and an Epson printer.
Asus BP6, Intel PII board.. same machine, different boards. Mice, Visor. No problems.
I wonder why USB sucks so much. It works fine for me (minus one due to the fault(s) of AMD)
USB would have to be a LOT faster (Score:2)
Re:Component computer... (Score:2)
Try the links mentioned at this link [slashdot.org]
Re:Component computer... (Score:2)
An out-of-box sound card makes a lot of sense because you avoid the crazy RF environment in your computer case. I think Creative have a good idea with this, and the next logical step would be to include video (since the thing has a remote control anyway). I'm not saying the thing should have a built-in 3D card; that would be stupid. I'd just like a nice, hardware TV tuner (those parts are dirt cheap), and maybe also a TV out.
Of course, the USB bus can't take all that, so the thing would need its own PCI interface, but then it would kick ass.
Re:Component computer... (Score:2)
Try the link I gave. At least check out the image.
CDs mixed for radio play are your problem (Score:2, Informative)
I'm tired of these lousy sounding CD's. People only think they sound good because 99% of them have never heard music reproduced at a higher quality
Your beef should not be with the format, but with the mixing and mastering. Many pop CDs that seem to lack punch sound that way because they're mixed for radio play, and FM radio has a poor dynamic range, so naturally you lose the kick in the kick drum.
Re:No need for 96 kHz or for analog (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Below 0 dB is below 0 dB (Score:2, Informative)
48khz is enough to reproduce 24khz audio signals, IF the phase of each frequency is known
I'm aware that sampling discards the sine component of tones at exactly the Nyquist frequency.
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.
Correct, but it can reproduce 23.9 kHz tones perfectly (phase and all), requiring only a convolution with (a windowed version of) the sinc function.
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.
In other words, a 1-bit linear sampling rate with a noise-shaped dither pattern.
As to the proper number of bit for PCM, the big problem is that we hear volume logrithmically but currently digital audio records linearly.
I understand this, and recent lossy audio codecs such as MP3 and Ogg take this into account when constructing quantization tables. Heck, even the mu-law encoding used on telephone lines is floating-point (i.e. approximately logarithmic).
but for very quite things (like quiet passages in classical music), the extra bits come in handy very quickly.
Even if we get into a whisper-quiet passage played at 30 to 35 dB SPL, and 16-bit linear PCM begins to use only the region around +/- 127, the ear still can't hear the quantization noise because it's 1. below 0 dB SPL and 2. most likely shifted up into the 16-22 kHz range, where the ear often can't reliably hear even 30 dB SPL, with the noise-shaped dither patterns commonly used in modern CD mastering.
The extra bits are also very handy for DSP type tasks
You're not supposed to do DSP on music you don't own rights to; you're supposed to listen to it.
Re:Stereo Component? (Score:2)
I cannot see any reason this device would be helpful for you.
First you need a server. Just run one of many mp3 players on the machine and control it externally via a program/webpage. Or run ESD, NAS, or ARTs on the box, and give it any sound data you wish. A maximum of 30ft of Cat5 to the server is fine.
Regardless of where the sound is coming out of, it still needs to get fed to your stereo.. so just run some cables from it to your stereo. So, run some cables.. whatever the length is from your server, run it. I don't know how long certain cables can be, but I'm sure optical ones may reach quite far.
The only reason you would need this is if your server does not have any existing soundcar, but then again.. you could just get a regular soundcard which would probably be both cheaper and better quality.
Re:Stereo Component? (Score:2)
But you could use IR too, for a remote control. There are lots of things you could do, it just depends on how much you wish to spend.. and what you currently have available.
Re:Wrong - It's a DMCA-friendly device (Score:2)
Don't know if this new device has the same problem.