Audio input cards for a PC

By next summer, I may be putting together a new computer system. Won't be bleeding edge, but will have the horsepower I'm looking for, so I can do some video editing and DVD burning. I have many old 8mm films to transfer to video, and a lot of VHS and Hi8 tapes that are irreplaceable.

My current setup is an AdB Digital PCI input card. It accepts both coaxial and optical digital inputs, and S/PDIF and AES digital formats. It can perform sampling rate conversions on the fly, and provides simultaneous encoding and decoding so you can monitor what you're working on. It also ignored SCMS...a must-have for me, since I want to put the audio portions of a couple of DVDs onto CD, and both my DAT and MD decks complain with "COPY PROHIBIT" flags signalling their surrender.

However, AdB appears to be out of business, and I'm having to use this otherwise excellent card in my old Pentium Pro in an ISA slot. I bought my most recent motherboard with a single ISA slot in it, but either the motherboard, the chipset or Windows XP Pro would not recognize the card properly, and it would never work. (It's almost like the computer was too fast for the card to keep up.)

One thought is that I may buy a used Pentium II computer at an upcoming computer show, drop this card in it, and use this computer strictly in my audio system for digital copying, as well as playback of WAV and MP3 files. But that seems like a step backward. I would much rather get a newer computer in the audio system and be able to use it for DVD playback as well. For editing, I'm looking at putting gigabit ethernet between my main computer and the audio system, so it doesn't take so long to copy files between computers. (I'd love to have one of those Shuttle computers, but I don't know if they have an available PCI slot.)

In my main computer now, I have the Soundblaster Audigy PLatinum. What attracted me was the control panel mounted in a drive bay--it has all sorts of inputs and outputs, even an IR sensor to use a remote control. I was hoping to use this "highly rated" card to put clean digital into my system, but was disappointed to find out that they've put some kind of digital processor in the system, and the bits I'm dumping into it aren't the bits that end up on the hard drive. (It's like they have some kind of limiter throttling back the digital signal to prevent distortion.) It is a nice card for playback though--it will even decode Dolby Digital. Nice to play a DVD on one monitor in full surround while doing my work on the other monitor.

My question, though--with AdB Digital gone, what's a good entry-level semi-pro or pro-audio digital card? I see a lot of unfamiliar brands out there, some less expensive, and some way beyond my reach. $200-$300 is a comfortable range for me; beyond that, I'm not apt to buy it because computing hardware becomes obsolete so fast. (I bought my AdB card, refurbished, directly from AdB at a discount.) My main purpose is to dub analog sources to the computer....the card *could* have a good on-board A/D converter, but it could also just be a digital input card like I have now, letting me choose my own A/D converter in the audio system. (I almost prefer to keep analog audio cabling away from the electrically noisy environment of a computer.)

TIA!

 

This may be a tad bit out of your range, but you could find a good deal on it to get it back into your range.

Lynx One


I use this card in my home studio and we use it in our multi-track editors at the station. Great service and a really good card for the money.

Good luck!

 

I just picked up the Audiophile 24/96 card from M Audio yesterday as I got a new computer and my old card was an ISA type. I installed it yesterday and so far I really like it. I use it primarily for lp to cd transfers with an outboard a/d converter. I picked it up for just under $150.... steve c

 

I was just going to suggest the Lynx One myself, as it's one of the nicest sounding that I've heard yet.

 

Yeah... very good card for the money. We used to use a Card D... was not very good and would clip all the time.

Digigram makes some good cards, but are very expensive. Antex has good cards, but the drivers are horrible in NT/2000.

 

I have the M-Audio Delta 44 with the breakout box. It makes AMAZING LP transfers with my Denon turntable. I managed to find a Sanui preamp to use (which is what you will need because there is no amplification in the card like a Creative card has) and realized I could have just used the regular M-Audio 2496 without the breakout box and save $50.

I just saw a special on the History Channel about the Smithsonian transferring acetates etc. and I thought I saw the M-Audio interface for a second on their screen. So if it's good enough for them, it's probably good enough for me....

 

This may do the job! I'll look around for it. The other card looks nice, but more than double what I'm willing to pay.

 

Well at > 105 dB S/N ratio, it should be pretty adequate for acetates...

 

About the gigabit ethernet, be advised that you'll be very limited in transferring speed by the hard drive. I have a 100megabit network but am limited to about a 6meg/sec transfer rate because that's as fast as the hard drive can write. Granted there are faster hard disks but frankly, it would be a waste of resources.

Best Regards
Francis

 

Agreed. Bus speed is a limitation for some computers as well. For so long the bottle neck was the bus... and the RAM

 

Hey, after a month, I'm re-reading this thread. Currently looking at M-Audio's website, trying to decipher all of these different products they have. The Audiophile 24/96 I found with no problem, but I came up with a few questions:

1. Does this card have an option for optical and coaxial digital inputs? From what I can see, it offers only coaxial. Since all of my gear uses optical... They do have a Delta DiO 2496 model that is more like my original card--it has both types of digital inputs, no analog inputs, but does have an analog output for monitoring. On one hand it would be nice to be able to do A/D conversions right on the card. But on the other hand, not being able to transfer anything from DAT, MD or CD via optical seems like a setback.

2. From what I can tell, I would probably need to keep a separate sound card in the system for playing back certain audio...especially surround soundtracks from DVDs. It does mention outputting DVD surround via the S/PDIF output, but with an external decoder...? I'm sort of lost on that point. (Since there is a good chance I'll be putting this into a dedicated home theater PC, I'm looking at all the options.)

3. Is it easy, with this card, to change the sampling rate? If I'm preparing something for a CD, I would think it better to record at 44.1, rather than record at 96 then downsample it using software.

 

I can't speak directly to your questions Rudy..

I can tell you, I installed an M-Audio card once using Win 2k and fought that damn card till I was blue in the face. IRQ steering inside windows kept placing that card on IRQ 11 along with my NIC and I was just pulling my hair out. It took me re-installing windows with a different Hardware Application Layer to fix the problem to use the M-Audio card. When it worked it was great. It was just a pain to install. Tech support was no help.

They didn't see any problem.

Sorry.

 

I forget the exact details, but there is a part of the registry you can delete where, on the next bootup, Win2K/XP will "re-enumerate" all of your hardware devices, which is basically the same thing. You're just asking it to take a new inventory and reassign all the new devices.

 

hum mmmm... Didn't know that trick. Thanks!

 

For work purposes, I will need to transfer video tapes to digital files. The PVR card I'm looking at requires a separate audio card.

What would be a reliable and inexpensive audio card? No audiophile credentials required.

Thanks in advance.

 

That Turtle Beach card was on sale up here for a decent price--wasn't it at Circuit City for $88 US? That seemed to be about the best lower-priced card out there. But heck, any sound card has an audio input. If you're not that concerned about quality, even a name-brand $50 would get sound into the computer.

 

Thanks Rudy.

Are El Cheapo cards sold at ebay for 20 bucks a risk?

 

I would rather buy a cheap card from a brand name manufacturer. I have bought no-name components in the past. The $13 fax modem I bought works great--it runs circles around my Supra Modem. The $10 Ethernet cards, no problem there either. The $15 sound card? I never could get it to work. May just have been some faulty drivers, but for the most part, it's unusable.

You might see what the low end is in a Sound Blaster (or Ensoniq, which they now own) or other name brand. Something that just has the basics. Just don't get an older card--I had problems with a Sound Blaster card that was too old for the system I put it in.

I got my Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum on eBay for a lot less than the going "street price", so that is still a good way to buy. When I do that, I look for a seller who lists maybe a half dozen at a time. Anyone who lists in bulk likely will have unsold items at the end of an auction, or items that sell for only one bid. My only warning: watch those shipping charges, as they're often inflated.

 

Thanks Rudy!