[PlanetCCRMA] Quality I/O

Niels Mayer nielsmayer at gmail.com
Sat Oct 30 11:46:26 PDT 2010


On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 12:52 PM, Donald Steven <t6sn7gt at aim.com> wrote:
> Sorry everyone if I'm going over old ground.  I want to replace my Audigy
> with a significantly better sound I/o card or interface, and can't spend big
> $$$.  The Audiophile 192 seems perfect, but posts dating back to 2005 talk
> about all kinds of problems.  In 2010, what do people recommend for good 2
> channel sound, with midi I/O, at an affordable price (say <$500).  Thanks so
> much.

In 2010, I recommend picking up a card that was much more expensive
when new, and had a company around to update the drivers to the latest
windows. Having a company around is not a problem with opensource and
the GPL. Consider ice1712 && http://mudita24.googlecode.com (see list
of cards, and yes i'm somewhat partial to this soundchip for the
price/performance point)

Still in production, perhaps with some of the best A/D and D/A's for
the money is the M-Audio Delta 1010. An equivalently clean design with
the A/D's and D/A's in an external breakout box is
http://cgi.ebay.com/Terratec-EWS88MT-24-bit-Multitrack-Recording-System-/320608398978
. These or others made by Terratec are now available for cheap on ebay
since they lack drivers. Terratec is no longer in business, but the
Phase88 is now http://www.musonik.com/index.php/terrasoniq-ts-88.html
in case you want a supported new product.

RME might be the best solution, but unless you buy it used, you may
not be able to stay under $500.00 minimum.

For fewer channels and no onboard mixer and other niceties (more for
audiophile playback)
http://www.audiotrak.net/products/prodigyhd2/

the op-amps and capacitors can be upgraded:
http://www.itemaudio.co.uk/prodigy_hd2.html
(in case you need it closer to the $500.00 range and want to impress
your audiophile friends with cool discrete opaps :-) ).

Niels
http://nielsmayer.com



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