On Tue, 22 Oct 2002, Peter L Jones wrote: >>> * MidiMan Delta Audiophile 2496 (Envy24) >>> * Creative SB PCI 128 (ES1371) >> I've used both of these extensively with JACK and numerous other ALSA apps >> and they work really well (full-duplex, low-latency use). Other > Heh. Now, one of these I have in my machine ((PII vintage) Celeron 400) > already. The other would set me back £150. Your comment makes me think > there's little to choose between them. So, simply upgrading my soundcard > from a £15 low end consumer-oriented unit to something costing 10 times the > price looks like getting me nothing. Or am I missing something? :-(
Well, yes. ES1371 brings you 2ch in+out with max 48000Hz sampling rate, and 16bit sample resolution. Midiman 2496 on the other hands provides up to 96kHz sampling rate, 24bit sample resolution, 2ch in+out and digital in+out. Check the specs from manufacturer's site. And btw, I confused Audiophile with Delta44 (which I have, has 4ins + 4outs, no digital in/out). Both are based on the envy24 chipset, should perform equally well. Please, correct me if I'm wrong. >> - GUS MAX (this very, very old ISA-card can still beat a number of >> today's crappy chipsets... I don't know whether to cry or laugh ;)) > I noticed that the ENS1371 seems to have a better rating on one site I looked > than to EMU10K, so this doesn't surprise me! Yup, I'll probably never get tired of the following slogan: "sb128 (ens1371) is the best creative card as it's the one they didn't make themselves". :) Ok, maybe the current SB cards are better, but I'll never forgive the company the disappointment their AWE64Gold caused me. Such waste of money! ;) >> All in all, most of the PCI-cards supported by ALSA have fairly good >> drivers. > But how do I compare one card with another? What should I be looking for? > How can I tell which will reduce the load on my computer and which will > increase the load? Is there any difference? Well, it depends on what you want to do. How many channels you need in and/or out, do you need high-quality recording, do you need digital ins/out, do you need hardware support for multi-open, etc, etc? I'm not a hardware expert so I can't answer to all these questions, but I can tell about the criteria I used when I selected my last card. My primary use is multitrack recording and mixing. I needed capability to record >2 channels, high-quality a/d and good support for low-latency and full-duplex. My choice was midiman delta44. It has 4 ins, an external a/d&a/d box (important for high-quality conversion), good ALSA drivers and wasn't too expensive (ie. a lot cheaper that the RME cards for instance). So far I've been very satisfied with this purchace. PS Let's cross-post to linux-audio-user. That and alsa-user are probably the best forums for this discussion. -- http://www.eca.cx Audio software for Linux! ------------------------------------------------------- This sf.net emial is sponsored by: Influence the future of Java(TM) technology. Join the Java Community Process(SM) (JCP(SM)) program now. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;4699841;7576301;v?http://www.sun.com/javavote _______________________________________________ Alsa-user mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-user
