daveny5 - ASIO is NOT I REPEAT NOT a driver man... can you tell me how an audio stack works? In both XP and Vista? I can sure explain it to you - but I am thinking that I might loose you on that. ASIO is an API - one more time in case you missed it - it is an API. An Application Programming Interface that connects an application to WDM compatible driver - or in the case of Vista a WDM Compatible driver or a UAA driver that is actually part of windows thus far more stable than a 3rd party driver.

Depending on the application you can select an API that you wish to use. Some may be MME (very old API that began it's life with Windows 3.1 (Multi Media Extenstions)). Directsound, which was part of the DirectX APIs. Both MME, and Directsound are now defunct starting with Vista - any application that uses any of these API's in Vista will go through an emulation to emulate Directsound or MME calls into WASAPI (Windows Audio Session API). There are 3rd party APIs such as Steinberg ASIO which is still the best API for audio applications out there (although WASAPI looks promising) that are not effected by this change.

Now with all that said - most UAA devices are (well look at that) onboard sound cards and Sound Blasters... I have yet to see a Pro Interface that is UAA Compliant. This is far more stable that having M-Audio, or Presonus, or MOTU any other 3rd party vendor write their own drivers. With UAA you can simply plug the device in and Windows already knows all about the device's features.

"The ASIO4ALL driver isn't even an ASIO driver. Its a WDM driver made to look like an ASIO driver. "

Again you need to learn the technology before you comment... this statement cannot be true as ASIO is not a driver (Drivers are WDM Kernel drivers (in XP/Vista) or UAA driver (in Vista). ASIO4ALL is an API that can talk to any WDM Kernel driver (well almost any). In a few years this well not work as Microsoft plans to move to using only the UAA driver model for audio devices and WDM Kernel drivers will be defunct.

Now I have NEVER had a problem with any onboard sound device's WDM Kernel driver or a Sound Blaster's - always work. If it works well in Windows then the driver is fine... however some applications might have problems with their API implementations. This has nothing to do with the driver. However if the application has calls that crashes the API or makes the API crash the driver... guess what, WDM is a kernel driver, and as the kernel IS windows, this would bring down the Operating System. You see how all these pieces play a part? The good thing about Vista's UAA - it is not a kernel driver. Means if there is a crash between the application and driver - it will not bring down the kernel (Operating System).

All in all the differences between the 'Pro Audio' interface and the standard 'Sound Card' are becoming marginal at best. The few components that are required (i.e the converters) are and have been for while on par with each other. And the others (i.e Mic Pres etc) that are aimed mostly at home recording musicians, however these are not ALWAYS required. If were to take my Joe Meek SixQ mic pre and connect from the digital out to the digital in on a X-Fi (Sound Blaster) I am sure I would get a slightly better recording that if I were to plug my mic into my Personus Firebox's mic pres.

The point that is trying to be made here is that 95% of the time if somebody mentions 'I use a Sound Blaster' or 'I am using the onboard soundcard' everybody jumps on them like they are superior for buying themselves a 'Pro Audio Interface' - yet these same people when it comes down to it have no idea how this stuff TRULY works.

You Audigy is junk hey? You know that since the Sound Blaster Live!, EMU has been designing and developing the chips for these cards? And now that Sound Blaster is UAA compatible you don't even need a Creative Labs driver for the card to work. Wish the same could be said for my Firebox, or my interfaces of the past....

Tascam US-428
Tascam US-224
Echo Audio Mona
MOTU 2408 (Original)
Steinberg VSL-2020
M-Audio Audiophile 2496
Saffire LE
Presonus Firepod
Roland UA-100 (before they changed this product line to Edirol)

I have seen a LOT of interfaces... some good some bad - but you need to know what to look before you can say what was good with them and what was bad.

Cheers,
Chris

ORIGINAL: thegeek

ORIGINAL: Jonbouy

If we both bounce a 24 bit wav file out of Sonar it there ain't gonna be any difference between yours or mine whatever you may imagine in your head.

Technically speaking,the bounced wav of Sonar or indeed any DAW is totally irrelevant to the quality of the souncard-IF we are talking for pre-recorded material,samples,and VSTs!And of course,if we could transfer a project through 2 different PCs with the exact same settings (EQs,filtering,signal processing in-the-box) and plug ins used (again without having recorded anything through the soundcard),and 2 totally different souncards, the bounced audio will be identical

However and seeing as some people here do know the tech side of things I have mainly too concerns:

1.The quality of the AD\DA converters between a consumer audio card and a so-called "pro-audio interface"
This means there is the chance that if we record material through our soundcard it will not be recorded with the same quality if the AD\DA converters are not of the same quality
But even if we only use pre-recorded material and VSTs,denpending on what you hear you end up making different decisions about the afforenmentioned settings in your project.So a degraded quality of sound can possibly lead to a misjudged mix and that I think doesnt need further technical explanations

2.The quality of the drivers between a consumer card and a "pro-audio inerface"
And Im not concerned about how that could affect the audio output quality BUT how it could affect the latency of the device

edit:typos

Latency I don't have a problem with and it may even be better than some USB devices, I can normally track midi at around 2.9ms with the above setup which is no great shakes granted but it hasn't caused me to go out and spend $200 upwards either.

Audio Tracking, forget about it unless you have already got a pre-amp. Fortunately I don't need to track audio so the whole set up works well for me but I mix down plenty of imported Audio stems with no issues at all.

Bigger concerns than the D/A output converters in the consumer card for most people would be the quality of the monitors and the room you are mixing in which is common to many of us who don't run a bona fide studio and my Mrs moving the furniture around in the 'Home' Studio would prolly have more impact on a mix than the card itself.

The top track on my Soundclick page is a good example as I did absolutely everything on that on a Laptop with a Realtek HD setup the final mp3 coming off a 24bit 44100 kwav, my limited mixing skills will certainly have had more of a negative impact on the final result than the hardware.

You know that since the Sound Blaster Live!, EMU has been designing and developing the chips for these cards?

Right... Chevrolets and Corvettes are both made by GM. You wouldn't catch me driving a Chevy (or any GM car for that matter) and you won't catch me using a Soundblaster either. If you are satisfied with Creative soundcards, then you should use them. but don't try to tell me that they are as good as M-Audio audio interfaces.

ORIGINAL: daveny5

You know that since the Sound Blaster Live!, EMU has been designing and developing the chips for these cards?

Right... Chevrolets and Corvettes are both made by GM. You wouldn't catch me driving a Chevy (or any GM car for that matter) and you won't catch me using a Soundblaster either. If you are satisfied with Creative soundcards, then you should use them. but don't try to tell me that they are as good as M-Audio audio interfaces.

That's what I am telling you - I feel that you need to defend the Delta 44 card because somebody you it was a Pro Audio card and now you need to justify it ;-) It is a decent card... but then again what isn't? I bet if a recording was done on an M-Audio card and a SB card you couldn't tell the diff. (of course it would have to be a blind fold test).

Do me a favor before you go so far as to say your M-Audio is better than a sound blaster... open the break out box - find the converters and tell me the model number and product code and let's find out who makes them? I know that Asahi Kesei makes the converters for Presonus Fireboxes, at least the ones made 3 years ago (yes these are specs you will not find on the web site or in the manual - you have to crack it open) and Sound Blaster uses Cirrus Logic converters. Both have VERY good reputations. I am positive that if you were to pull apart every 'Pro Audio' card you will find a few that use the same converters.

Sorry daveny - not meaning to be a jerk - but people really need to learn how this stuff works inside and out before they start relaying the marketing hype. Earlier you mentioned something about HDTV (another area I am well versed in) same goes for that... an HD video cam costs nearly $1000 (for a decent unit), yet uses the same CCD or CMOS sensors found in my 3MP digital cam of 10 years ago... another marketing hype. Hell I can get a 5MP cam for $20 now, a toy! And yet still have more resolution than an HD cam.... why? Marketing man - its there to make the buyer feel he or she is getting a better product.

"Pro Interfaces" are merely the same in almost every aspect as a Sound Blaster (deny it or not... it's true) minus say some better pre-amps, and perhaps an ASIO API supplied by the vendor. Why should an individual get the cold shoulder because he or she is doing fine with an Onboard card or a Sound Blaster. With all the experts here, I never did read an actual working solution to any of these user problems... it's always 'Get a Pro Card' - reminds me of the days I was the Moderating Support Staff for Steinberg at cubase.net. I used to work Steinberg's distributors here in Canada - and do in-store demos, I would get many people asking if they could start with a SB card - the fact is - yes, it is a viable solution.

Be a geek - read up! ;-)

Chris

I did quite a bit of work on making HDAudio devices work properly in SONAR 8 both in XP and in Vista.
You should be able to get 24 bit recording and playback working in SONAR 8 with most of these devices.

In Vista on some multichannel HDAudio implementations there are issues were issues where channels other than 1 and 2 may not work. In one such case it was resolved by installing the manufacturers driver rather than using the stock HDAudio.sys driver. Also in Vista the issue is sometimes complicated further by WaveRT drivers that are not event mode.

ORIGINAL: Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]

I did quite a bit of work on making HDAudio devices work properly in SONAR 8 both in XP and in Vista.
You should be able to get 24 bit recording and playback working in SONAR 8 with most of these devices.

Thanks Noel,

I'm still on S7 but I had mentioned on another similar thread that I'd noticed that someone had put the work in and S8 was likely even better.

I'm never likely to use more than the first 2 channels on it anyway so that's unlikely to ever be an issue. Recording and Playback both work great on S7 with the caveat you will need a mic preamp but apart from that necessity that anyone thinking of recording would need anyway Sonar REALLY does cover the whole does cover the full spectrum from the humblest to most exacting users.

A massive achievement which has certainly not been lost on me.

I believe too the latest Realtek HD codecs (ALC889) which are already in production are up to 192k for both recording and playback have an excellent 110db s/n ratio and can apparently be BBE HDS192 certified (whatever that means but apparently its impressive).

So if some hardware manufacturer can just come up with a top spec mic pre for under $10 we'll ALL be set to go...

I'm not a tech guy, more of a practical activist but I can tell ya it's all working and working well with no more issues than anyone else bumps into from time to time with any other interface, and the results are perfectly in the ball-park for my purposes.

I'd certainly buy you a beer for that...

btw I've just found out that Realtek are the source for some high spec clock devices too so don't be surprised to find a little Realtek heart pumping away in yer top end card...

Chris you make a lot of good points but the problem is most of us have had at some point an SB that we used years ago. It was OK then for the simple things we may have done then now many need low latency multiple in and outs with decent pres. An SB or onboard chip just wont cut it. Drivers aside nothing that comes on the MB is going to out perform a high quality well made audio interface. No argument is goiny to change that fact.

We have a well known poster here that has a real animosity toward SBs and in most cases he is right. However I and a few others have defended the SB cards that can in fact work in a well setup machine but they will never give the same performance that a pro audio interface can and does give. Nor can any of these deal with various sampling rates or bit depths that many of us routinely use.

BTW ASIO does not use WDM at all. You can run an ASIO dirver on Win 98 before WDM came out. Cubase used it with Cubase VST. It was their way to bypass the MME driver of that time and allow for multiple ins and outs. MME would not support multiple ins and outs. Also it was not a low latency driver model

ORIGINAL: John

Drivers aside nothing that comes on the MB is going to out perform a high quality well made audio interface. No argument is goiny to change that fact.

I notice you revert to the older SB argument here so bringing into the now with all you have read here can you not concede that the margin between the latest CURRENT onboard chips and 'pro' interfaces implemented in many cases 4-5 years ago has gotten a whole lot smaller?

The specifications alone suggest otherwise...I'd rather save up fer a good pre because the audio interface surpassed the human ear by a long way some time ago.

I feel that you need to defend the Delta 44 card because somebody you it was a Pro Audio card and now you need to justify it ;-)

No. I've used an Audigy and a Realtek and the drivers are not as good and I didn't think they had the clarity of sound that the Delta44 has. No one told me anything and I've had my Delta44 since they first came out, many years ago.

I don't doubt there is marketing hype... I believe all advertising is lies and exaggerations so I'm not really influenced by that. If you search the web, you'll find that Creative Labs has lost several lawsuits for overhyping their products.

Check out these charts for a head-to-head comparison.

There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation.

Herbert Spencer