[time-nuts] Sound Cards

Bruce Griffiths bruce.griffiths at xtra.co.nz
Wed Jan 14 03:27:41 UTC 2009


Steve

Do you mean?:
http://www.firecom.com/

Bruce
steve heidmann wrote:
> Firecomm.com has some nice parts to look at
>
> --- On Tue, 1/13/09, Demian Martin <demianm at attglobal.net> wrote:
>
> From: Demian Martin <demianm at attglobal.net>
> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Sound Cards
> To: time-nuts at febo.com
> Date: Tuesday, January 13, 2009, 4:05 PM
>
>
> Magnus Danielson wrote:
>
>   
>>> The digital link in question is S/PDIF; with the current popularity
>>> of Home Theater systems cheap cards with digital I/O have become
>>> quite prevalent. As an added bonus, S/PDIF can be run over both
>>> coaxial and optical media, the latter being attractive in further
>>> isolating PC noise from any measurement setup. And of course, a
>>> manufacturer's evaluation board is much better documented and
>>>       
> more
>   
>>> suited to measurement-specific mods than a random sound card.
>>>       
>> The optical link commonly being used for S/P-DIF is TosLink and it seems
>> like it can be the cause of many problems. It seems like some care in
>> doing the optical link setup is needed. I have never digged into why the
>> optical links have that problem. I can only guess, but bad optical
>> coupling seems reasonable. The multimode "fiber" seems to be
>>     
> leaving one
>   
>> or two things to ask for.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Magnus
>>     
>
> Without getting too "audiophile" there are several considerations.
> Toslink
> is bandwidth limited- the LED's are not really fast enough for 96K and
> really not for 192K sampling. The effect is high jitter on the link or a
> lost connection. The high jitter may not matter if the sampling is done with
> the external capture system (most of which are much more expensive). SPDIF
> or AES/EBU don't have the bandwidth limitation but can have other issues.
> The cheap ones don't have transformer isolation, however the transformers
> can increase the jitter on the link. You can use external USB capture, I'm
> playing with an EMU Tracker pre gadget that seems to do 192K at 24 bits
> pretty well and for $125. But I get better results from the ESI Juli@ pci
> card for around the same price, very low distortion and noise, and good Alsa
> support in Linux. It may be all that's needed.
>       -Demian 
>
>
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