Subject:I'm comparing audio Cards?...

Posted by: luces

Date:9/2/2002 7:48:33 PM

Okay,thanks to the friendly folks on this forum I was able to get both my SB Live and M-Audio cards installed. Now, I don't consider myself to be a newbie to sound quality because I have been a working/recording musician for many years, but I have been comparing the SB to the M-Audio and I must admit that I am disappointed in the performance of the M-Audio(Audiophile 24/96). I am not trying to slam any company so don't anybody take offense.

I am only stating this because there is a slight improvement using the M-Audio card, but I am wondering if perhaps I have purchased a defective card (lots of crackles and "fuzzy" pops) or is there some tip I might be missing in getting the best out of this card. I have only read and heard RAVE reviews of this card and so I am a bit displeased by the minimal difference. I have messed with the latency settings and every Delta Control Panel possibility and it still is only a minimal improvement. I will post my system specs so that anybody here will have a better understanding. Also I have updated my bios and mobo drivers to the latest and greatest per M-Audio tech's advice. thanks in advance to anyone who replies! Also, just as a side note I am not using state of the art monitors, just a small pair of Yamaha bookshelf speakers.

system specs: Epox EP-7KXA mobo w/ VIA KT 133 chip
Athlon 700 mghz processor
446 megs of 100mghz sdram
ATI Rage IIc Video card
Western Digital 20g. 7200rpm drive ATA 66

That's the core. Thanks again, Luces.

Subject:RE: I'm comparing audio Cards?...

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:9/2/2002 8:37:29 PM

You're right. You shouldn't be experiencing the cracks and pops. The sound quality of my Audiophile is ages above my old SB Live.

I've heard of issues using the VIA chipset. Have you tried the latest VIA chipset drivers over at EPoX? (I know you mentioned updating the drivers but it could be overlooked.)

It also sounds like the Audiophile itself may be defective.

Again, you should be getting much better quality using the Audiophile. What resolution and sample rate are you trying to use? Which version of ACID do you have?

HTH,
Iacobus

Subject:RE: I'm comparing audio Cards?...

Reply by: Spirit

Date:9/3/2002 9:13:22 AM

VIA chipsets are notoriously awful for audio. I'd look into that first. Native Instruments, for example, specifically warn that WHATEVER they tried they could not eliminate crackles using Reaktor on a VIA chipset - the specific soundcard is irrelevant to this. There's also the possibility that your SB card interacting with your VIA is causing the poor quality you're getting on your other card. There are lots of web references to this problem. Here's a forum that talks of it in detail:

http://www.bluelifeaudio.com/viewtopic.php?topic=1026&forum=21

Here's a short bit of info:

http://www.hardwareguys.com/picks/soundcard.html

That says this (excuse the cut & paste job - how do I do active links ?):
Although the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! line of PCI sound adapters are immensely popular, we cannot recommend them. We have many reports of poor audio quality, compatibility problems, and system crashes attributable to a Sound Blaster Live! sound adapter. We have experienced these problems ourselves on Windows 9X and Windows 2000 systems, despite loading the latest drivers and doing everything else we could think of to resolve them, including fiddling with PCI latency. These problems are documented on public messageboards, the USENET comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.* and microsoft.public.win2000.* newsgroups, and elsewhere. Note that although these problems are most common with the Live! boards, they also occur with earlier boards such as the AWE32.

The usual symptoms are crackling sound, dropouts, DMA problems, bluescreens, and sporadic system crashes, including blackscreen crashes to a hard reboot. The problems seem most common on motherboards that use <<<< VIA KT-133 >>>>> family chipsets, but we have seen similar problems on motherboards that use non-VIA chipsets, including the remarkably stable Intel i440BX and 815 chipsets. Although the problems don’t show up on every system and are sometimes not reproducible, they are common enough that we consider them systemic. Problems seem most likely to occur on overclocked systems, systems with ACPI enabled, and systems that have a high-performance video card, although we have seen the problem occur on vanilla Intel 440BX and 815-based systems that were not overclocked, did not use ACPI, and used only embedded video.

The only solution we know of is to remove the Sound Blaster Live! card, go in with fire and sword to eradicate all Creative Labs drivers, and install a different sound adapter. Unfortunately, the Creative Labs drivers are very persistent, and a simple uninstall leaves drivers and registry entries that may cause continued problems. Doing a repair or upgrade installation of the operating system isn’t enough. The only sure way we know to solve the problem is to back up your data, fdisk your hard drive, and reinstall the operating system and all applications from scratch.

Subject:RE: I'm comparing audio Cards?...

Reply by: luces

Date:9/3/2002 11:02:58 AM

Thanks for the posts. I have updated the VIA drivers and I installed the M-Audio onto a "clean" system first and thought it sounded pretty good, but then when I installed the SB I didn't notice a drastic difference. Along with the pops I am also refering to just the overall robust quality of the sound. I will admit that the highs are smoother and the bass is a bit more full sounding, but not 3x more as the cost comparisons would reflect. The pops are not awful, but noticable. I have seen other posts where people are hearing LOUD pops. These are subtle on my system. I am not using the ASIO drivers b/c it is a known bug with Acid 4. I am only using 44K 16 bit playback and on some projects it is clean and on others it is a bit noisy. The thing that is strange is that it sounds good on projects with a ton of FX and tracks and then it might sound bad on a project with minimal tracks and no FX. It is a mystery. Well maybe I will have to get another mobo. It seems like such a drag to have to do so much tweaking ,but maybe great sound on a PC just doesn't happen over night. Any suggestions on mobo's people? Thanks again, Luces.

Subject:RE: I'm comparing audio Cards?...

Reply by: TeeCee

Date:9/3/2002 12:24:47 PM

What Sound Blaster are you comparing the M-Audio to? What O/S are you using? I did not have the latest build, but one beforee the latest build of the M-Audio drivers in Win98, but am now running Xp Pro. The M-Audio drivers give me the option of having 1/20th the latency I had in Win98 (no kidding, the buffer sizes allowed are much smaller and seem to work so far). Are the clicks and pops all in Acid? What does your CPU meter say? I am getting good results on two AMD systems (a VIA chipset and an AMD/VIA chipset) one with a Delta 66, the other with an Audiophile. Note that the SB is more than likely locked at 48kHz sampling and for 44.1kHz sampling, it must down sample in software. Terrible. And that your audiophile will sample at 96kHz (although I never use mine there). Also, you may get better M-Audio performance without the SB installed. If you can't hear the benefits of the M-Audio yet, keep using it and you'll appreciate it more and more (until you want to use it with Acid 4 that is). You should also be recording files at 24bit depth. The math round off will mostly be lost when you truncate to 16 bits for CDs, unlike a 16 bit recording that just loses more and more quality.

TeeCee