M Audio Soundcards

mike stehr · November 13, 2004

G*dammed armchair listeners......

pinipig523 · November 13, 2004

Griff,

Are you a professional sound engineer? Where do you work? I would like to know because it seems like you know quite a bit about soundcards (something I use for my computer speaker system).

Griffinator · November 13, 2004

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On 11/13/2004 7:49:02 PM pinipig523 wrote:

Griff,

Are you a professional sound engineer? Where do you work? I would like to know because it seems like you know quite a bit about soundcards (something I use for my computer speaker system).

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I have, in the past, worked in professional audio as a recording engineer and as a mastering engineer. I still take on occasional jobs (mostly live sound, on-location type stuff) but I don't do it for a living.

Griffinator · November 13, 2004

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On 11/13/2004 2:01:06 PM paulparrot wrote:

I love it when an ignoramus calls someone else ignorant. Keep up the good work, Mr. Pro.

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Ah, the old "I know you are but what am I?" argument. How infantile of you, Paul.

nicholtl · November 14, 2004

Paul's a crackhead, we all know that.

Parrot · November 14, 2004

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On 11/13/2004 1:35:53 PM Griffinator wrote:

But hey, that's cool. You've got your M-Audio 24/96 card, you're happy with it, go on your merry way. But don't go telling everyone that

most people

can't hear a difference between an external DAC over a soundcard's internal DAC, because you're flat wrong, and I can line up at least 500 people that

I know personally

that will back me up on that point, because they all hear the difference, and so do I.

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If it wouldn't be too much trouble, would you mind following through on this? I'd like to hear from these 500 people that you know personally who will attest to the fact that most people can hear a difference between an extrenal DAC and a soundcard's internal DAC.

Dflip · November 14, 2004

Griffinator, you must realize by now that Paul will argue black is white and white is black for his own personal enjoyment. When the argument doesn't go his way, he starts calling names. Please don't feed the lawn ornaments.

Unless I was going to use the outs from the soundcard to go to my preamp, then I wouldn't invest in the external DAC. It may sound better, but I have a nice two channel system for that. The computer just needs to sound very good, not great. The DAC costs about the same as a computer now a days.

Marvel · November 14, 2004

Taking the digital out of a sound card (which means it doesn't really do a whole lot itself) and a $90 dollar one at that, and feeding that signal into a $500-$600 DAC ought to sound better. Duh! That was my point Griff. If you start with a decent sound card to begin with, most won't bother to drop another half grand to get better sound. There are tons of people who still use Sound Blasters and they don't know any better.

How much did your AI3 cost? What about the ADAT i/o interface card?

Paul is right on this one.

Parrot · November 14, 2004

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On 11/14/2004 7:18:17 PM Marvel wrote:

Paul is right on this one.

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Yep, I usually am.

Parrot · November 14, 2004

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On 11/14/2004 6:29:42 PM Dflip wrote:

Griffinator, you must realize by now that Paul will argue black is white and white is black for his own personal enjoyment. When the argument doesn't go his way, he starts calling names. Please don't feed the lawn ornaments.

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Hmmm, is lawn ornament a "name"? How about "crackhead"? How about someone who makes a "blatantly ignorant statement"? Let's see now, was it me calling names? No, reviewing the posts it was a) Dflip Nicholtl c) Griffinator.

My advice, if you're going to lie, is don't do it on a forum with the posts available for all to see in black and white.

DrWho · November 15, 2004

For what it's worth, this $50 external soundcard blows the crap out of any other internal sound card I've heard:

http://us.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=206&product=10702

As far as the external versus internal debates go, science shows that external DACs are better in that they have an audibly lower noise floor and less jitter. Whether or not someone will notice the difference is entirely subjective. For example, my dad can't tell the difference between his Bose speakers and my Klipsch and Marantz speakers. I (and probably you) cannot fathom how he can't tell the difference and it is to the same magnitude that I cannot fathom how someone can't tell the difference between external and internal DACs. Ironically, I can't decide whether or not my dad is cursed or blessed; I especially can't see how being critical would enhance the entertainment. The M-Audio sound cards get rave reviews all the time because they perform exceptionally well for an internal card. For those people not experiencing any issues with internal cards, then consider yourself fortunate. I've gone through over 30 computers all with varying levels of audio quality and the external products have always performed better for the money. I'm only 20 years old and have been mixing for over 12 years and I've still got perfect hearing so perhaps that might be influencing what I'm experiencing...(versus the experiences of others running around)

Another thing to note is that internal soundcards are limited in their size whereas external cards can be as big as you want them to be. Though to be fair, the extra room is generally used for multiple inputs and outputs and other features that most people won't be using. Nevertheless, spreading the circuits out is the whole reason people use seperates instead of recievers. Also, the power supply in an external DAC is going to be much better than the one in your pc.

neo33 · November 15, 2004

"Every single day, all over the professional recording industry, people that use computers in Digital Audio Workstation deployments use outboard DAC's because on-card DAC's sound like crap comparatively speaking. Are you going to argue with 10,000 professional recording engineers?"

I wouldn't argue with 10,000 engineers (didn't know it takes that many to master digital music). But isn't it why CDs sound suck? .

nicholtl · November 15, 2004

CD sound does not suck!

maxg · November 15, 2004

Right now I am using a Soundblaster Audigy 2 external sound card(?) on the computer I have set up as a video/audio server on my system at home.

I notice that this has an optical out. If I were to use this with an external DAC:

1. Would this be compatible with all the files that I play from the computer (in 2 channel format). These include DVD's, CD's, MP3, DIVX movies, Windows media format audio files etc. etc.?

2. What external DACs are worth looking at for something around $2-300?

3. Would the result be better than changing the Soundblaster for an M-audio equivalent? (It has to be either USB or Fireware - my computer has no more slots available).

Just a few points on the issues raised so far in the thread:

1. USB and Fireware are a godsend - not a waste of money. They allow almost unlimited expansion of your computer for almost no investment (I picked up a USB 2 PCI card for $18 and a fireware PCI card for similar money). they allow the connection of innumerable devices from printers to disk drives, sound cards, scanners, cameras, video cameras etc. etc.

2. Arguing about the relative benefits of an internal sound card on its own Vs a sound card connected to an external dac should really be limited to those who have experienced both. I get the feeling a number of people on this thread are arguing without the benefit of having played with both.

3. CD does not have to suck - it just happens to a lot of the time - a product of poor production all the way through the process from mastering to pressing.

4. There is much mention of hardware, but little mention of software here. As someone who has been in and around computers for over 20 years now I can tell you the vast majority of real performance improvements come from software and not hardware. Case in point:

I just installed a DVD dual layer writer in my old 500 MHz pentium 3 PC. According to the manual for the reader the recommended minimum setup is a Pentium 4 at 2 GHz. Sure enough the thing wont even play back a DVD properly using the supplied DVD software - skips and jumps through the video - totally unable to keep up with the stream.

However, when I unintall their software and install my old Power DVD software (which states minimum requirements of 350 MHz Pentium 3) playback is faultless on the very same DVD (Cher in concert as it happens).

Now the inintiated would almost certainly be fooled into heading out to buy a new PC to do, what is, a fairly simple job - simply because the software is so incredibly inefficient.

Whilst the above example is for video playback and not for audio it is, I think, indicative of the variance you could expect to find in audio playback software as well. Changing your chosen software could well make a huge difference to playback quality - theoretically as big, if not bigger, than making a hardware change.

Just my $0.02. YMMV, IMHO and all that jazz...

Parrot · November 15, 2004

Max,

When listening to Cher in concert, is getting that last 1/100 of 1% quality improvement really that important?

maxg · November 15, 2004

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On 11/15/2004 7:55:37 AM paulparrot wrote:

Max,

When listening to Cher in concert, is getting that last 1/100 of 1% quality improvement really that important?

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Frankly probably not - but I think we are talking about a rather larger difference than that between the computer playback and the dedicated DVD player.

How do you put a percentage on these things? If I were to say it is 15% better on the DVD player would that make any sense? All I can say is it is better to my ears.

DrWho · November 15, 2004

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On 11/15/2004 3:26:21 AM maxg wrote:

Right now I am using a Soundblaster Audigy 2 external sound card(?) on the computer I have set up as a video/audio server on my system at home.

I notice that this has an optical out. If I were to use this with an external DAC:

1. Would this be compatible with all the files that I play from the computer (in 2 channel format). These include DVD's, CD's, MP3, DIVX movies, Windows media format audio files etc. etc.?

2. What external DACs are worth looking at for something around $2-300?

3. Would the result be better than changing the Soundblaster for an M-audio equivalent? (It has to be either USB or Fireware - my computer has no more slots available).

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You're using the USB version of the audigy2 right? If that's the case, then you've already got your DAC outside of the computer.

As far as software goes, your sound quality is actually getting limited quite a bit by your windows operating system. I think there's something called the kmixer which digitally upsamples all the audio to 48kHz which then gets downsampled back to 44.1kHz with your soundcard when it goes through the DAC or something like that. All I know is that it hurts your sound because the windows software does it poorly. But if you're going to get into the software side of things, then check out this site:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org

There's a bunch of forums and info there that gets way into the computer audio world.

neo33 · November 15, 2004

"CD sound does not suck!"

IMO, most CDs sound suck!

10,000 engineers and they couldn't figure out how to make a CD sounds better then vinyl! Pretty amazing!

Griffinator · November 15, 2004

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On 11/15/2004 12:09:35 PM neo33 wrote:

"CD sound does not suck!"

IMO, most CDs sound suck!

10,000 engineers and they couldn't figure out how to make a CD sounds better then vinyl! Pretty amazing!

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Blame the record companies for insisting on "loudest CD in the changer" sound, which forces the mastering engineers to crush the life out of the songs in order to accomplish maximum dB RMS.....

Griffinator · November 15, 2004