Professional Sound Cards?

[SteveD]

I am trying to find a high quality sound card with 1/4" inputs and outputs. I have tried the Maya 44 and Echo Mia Midi cards. They both sound way better than a Sound Blaster 24 bit card with 1/8" inputs and outputs. The problem is that with both these 1/4" input/output boards I get problems trying to import a singers disc while playing another singers song. Both cards cause the singers song to warble while importing customers song.

I have tried every possible sound card setting to reduce or eliminate this problem. Has anyone out there had good success with any 1/4" input/output sound card, and if so which ones?

[marty45714]

Hi,
I have worked in broadcasting most of my life and have used all types of radio automation systems. There are basically only 2 brands of cards ever used in computer based broadcast audio systems: 1) Digigram and 2) Audio Science.
Digigram is known to be the best. Look for either one of these cards if you want the best possible audio without the performance issues you are talking about. What sets these cards apart from the rest is that they do a large amount of the audio processing on the card that the computer does not have to do. Also they offer large memory buffers for the sound. This stops the stuttering and other nasty effects you sometimes hear on consumer grade audio cards when you "spike" the CPU. Hope this helps.

[SteveD]

Marty, Thanks for your advice. Are you using one of these and if so which one? Also do you have any idea on costs?

Thanks,

[MTUSUPPORT]

Thanks for the Input Marty.

It sounds like the problem is the sound card using or needing to much CPU usage at the time, which as you stated on a Higher end sound card it should use more of its own DSP instead of the Processor.

[SteveD]

I know this sounds strange but processor activity for all of the sound cards that I have tried have not gone higher than 40% CPU activity during the reading of the singers CDG. It is not a matter of maxing out the CPU. I am using an AMD 3000+ 64 bit processor with 1GB of OCZ ram.

This same problem has been occurring on both systems I have built. The only sound card out of 4 total sound cards that works properly is the Sound Blaster Audigy. The problem is that it can't deliver the quality of sound that the Mia Midi and the Maya 44 can. The difference is very noticeable, even to the point that customers have commented on it.

I am tired of buying sound cards (1/4 inch inputs and outputs) that can't deal with reading a singer’s CDG while playing another singers song. I would really appreciate some feedback from people using some "high quality" sound cards that are not experiencing this stuttering problem while reading a singers disc.

[Blastenfrog]

Something i have found is when importing a singers disk if Hoster is not maximized completely then the current song playing will boggle. However, if it is maximized I do not have that problem. I used SB Audigy external sound card when hoster is maximized i have never had the boggle problem when importing another singers songs. However i would be interested in the sound cards that the above poster was talking about.

[SteveD]

Are you talking about the Hardware Acceleration and the Sample Rate Conversion Quality settings? If so I have tried every possible setting to stop the stuttering. With the Maya 44 the stuttering gets less and less as you reduce the settings to lower levels of quality, but with both of the settings all the way to the left it still reamains.