Side By Side Comparison of the M-Audio Audiophile 192 and the Audigy2

I got the M-audio Audiophile 192 not too long ago and did a side by side test with my older Soundblaster Audigy2 card. Guitar>PODxt>Sound Card. Is there a big difference between the two in sound quality? Absolutely not. In fact, I don’t hear practically any difference at all.

Here are the short comparison CLIPS (All using wdm drivers).

When using wdm drivers the 192 is about 5msec faster, but when using the Audigy2's asio drivers, you can go lower then the 192. Also I’m having little problems with the 192 (audio gets choppy after 10 seconds when I listen to a wav file in winamp). Also I can’t get the metronome to play in Sonar with the 192, I’m guessing because it is only a midi interface, where the Audigy2 has those basic midi sounds. It seems like the Audigy is just much more convenient for me.

Anyway, I’m posting this to see if I’m missing something, because if this is all there is, there’s no reason for the upgrade. I’d rather sell this and get a good pair of monitor headphones and save the rest of the money for something else in the near future.

Thanks for your time,

ORIGINAL: rg7621

I got the M-audio Audiophile 192 not too long ago and did a side by side test with my older Soundblaster Audigy2 card. Guitar>PODxt>Sound Card. Is there a big difference between the two in sound quality? Absolutely not. In fact, I don’t hear practically any difference at all.

Here are the short comparison CLIPS (All using wdm drivers).

When using wdm drivers the 192 is about 5msec faster, but when using the Audigy2's asio drivers, you can go lower then the 192. Also I’m having little problems with the 192 (audio gets choppy after 10 seconds when I listen to a wav file in winamp). Also I can’t get the metronome to play in Sonar with the 192, I’m guessing because it is only a midi interface, where the Audigy2 has those basic midi sounds. It seems like the Audigy is just much more convenient for me.

Anyway, I’m posting this to see if I’m missing something, because if this is all there is, there’s no reason for the upgrade. I’d rather sell this and get a good pair of monitor headphones and save the rest of the money for something else in the near future.

Thanks for your time,

Recording an electric guitar is not a good test of sound quality. Many of the things bad things that happen to an analog signal that would be noticed have already happened to the guitar sound before it gets to the sound card and on purpose ! So if that is all you are recording maybe quality is not a issue for you. The folks who record acoustic stuff with a microphone are the ones who might notice what good converters and input stage can do. But again this is only if the quality gets to the sound card. If you have a microphone and preamp that are not up to the task all you will do is get a better copy of a bad sounding signal.

ORIGINAL: ohhey
If you have a microphone and preamp that are not up to the task all you will do is get a better copy of a bad sounding signal.

Well stated. The true test will be with clean signal, but both your clean samples play the same mp3 so it's hard to hear any difference.

Are you recording in 24-bit or 16-bit?

I've been over this a hundred times but....

I did some tests for two different forums a couple of years back comparing an SBLive and an Echo MIA MIDI. Not one person could tell which was which. I tried everything too, including some well miked acoustic guitar stuff.

Simply stated, Creative did something stupid with the Live series of cards that caught them a lot of flack. When the SBLive came out they saddled it with a default bitrate/resolution of 16/48. They did this because they knew a lot of gamers and people watching DVD's on computer were using their cards. A lot of games, and all DVD's use 16/48 for playback purposes, so this made sense to the people at Creative. Unfortunately, they never told this to anybody, so people who were getting their feet wet with computer music recording were trying to record at 16/44.1 not knowing that the card defaulted to 16/48. So what was happening was, that the card was recording their tracks at 16/48 and then trying to convert to 16/44.1 on the fly while you were recording, and the card just couldn't keep up. So when people played their tracks back they would find that they would generally start to go out of sync around 2-minutes into the recording. Also, the tracks were just a tad distorted when recording like this—not so much that it was really noticeable as distortion—but just enough to let you know that "something" didn't sound quite right.

It took me a long time to figure out what was going on and I had to dig through Creative's website forever before I could find any info about the default recording rate but once I found it...it was pretty easy to see what was happening. I was on CakeWalk's email list for GT at the time and I sent a message to some users telling them to try recording at 16/48 and then dithering the final master later. No more problems. It was all just a misunderstanding really but Creative's reputation has suffered for it ever since.

They also screwed themselves when they came out with the first Audigy card by plastering "24/96" all over the box it came in, making people think that it would finally record at 24 bit. What it actually meant was that the card would "play back" at 24/96. It still recorded at 16/48 with no way to change it. It wasn't until Audigy2 that they finally had a card that would record at 24-bit.

So there you have it. Well actually there's a bit more to it I guess. Because people's recordings were a little "off" sounding when trying to record at 16/44.1, a rumor started that Creative cards had lousy converters. Not true. There was also a rumor that the little mini jacks were a cause of bad sound. Also not true. In fact, there was some electronics guy somewhere that ran some tests on various sound card in/out jacks that showed the little mini jacks often were better made than some of the 1/4" jacks on a lot of other cards and were actually passing a cleaner signal. There was also a rumor that Creative cards were noisy. Again, not true at all. Even the original SBLive had a s/n ratio of over 90db, which is so close to dead silence that anything greater would be pointless.

I've got a wma file I keep on my server just for demonstration purposes of what the SBLive could do when recording at its default of 16/48 like its supposed to. I believe there's around 28-tracks here, all played by myself except for the drums which may have been Bret Schlosser, but possibly someone else. (My singing is fairly awful which is why I canned the track.) I defy anybody to find any noise or distortion anywhere on here. The SBLive cards were a tremendous bang for the buck, especially when you figure in their synth. And my much lauded MIA card sounds no better whatsoever even at 24-bit with the best preamps money can buy.

Me And My Arrow

Well, I don't know that they were trying to be deceptive. Its hard to say really. But they certainly were their own worst enemy at times.

Hey Joe Bravo, or whoever can answer...

Does the Audigy 2 still default at 16/48? I record using 16/44.1 and haven't experienced any real big issues...but if 48 will improve performance...what the heck...

Thanks

I must agree JB, I had a Audigy 2 ZS in my PC when I decided to go out and get Sonar. When I started looking into equipment everyone said this soundcard was useless. I have not invested the money or expertise into this feild yet, but may as I just love this technology.
Through trail and error I have got my DAW working just fine for me. The only thing I didnt like about the audigy was the inputs, although they work fine they are not friendly to most sound equipment, so I went and got a M-audio Firewire solo and this gave me all the options I need for now anyway(I know I need alot more gear yet). On Sonar the in/out options are plenty with the 2 sound cards.And I have had no conflicts with them both being active on Sonar.

Although I am currently looking for a good set of Near-fields to plug in to the Firewire which will put all my out puts through it, I have no beefs with the audigy sound card at all.

Greystorm

My Gear
Pentium 4 CPU 2,4 Ghz
512 MB RAM

WIN XP SP1
Maxtor 30 G HD
WDC 120 G HD

Sonar 4 Producer edition
Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS
M-Audio Firewire Solo

Old Korg DW-6000
Behringer- Vamp-2

South Paw
Washburn Dreadnought Acoustic
Ibanez – /Les Paul Sunburst Electric

thanks for the answer Joe B....I've been recording for awhile now and I feel somewhat knowledgable about the process....

when I first started I figured the SB would be temporary for me...being how its blasted by virtually everybody, but the more I use it...the more I don't see a need to change...

its easy to use, latency issues are minimal and MIDI is a snap. I think there is quite a bit of soundcard "snobbery" in regards to this, but to each his own...we have lots of choices and we are free to use what we want.