Sound card with S/PDIF input (and output) wanted

Sound card with S/PDIF input (and output) wanted

[Christian Worm Mortensen]

Hi,

Can it really be true that there exists no useable sound card (except for
the in Europe very expensive Turtle Beach Pinnacle card) with S/PDIF input
that is supported by Linux? Either by OSS/free or ALSA. The only thing I
have found is:

1) Turlte Beach Fiji - but that card seems to have been withdrawn from the
market
2) Hoontechs Multisound cards - but theese seems to resample all incomming
data to their own 44.1Khz clock.


Christian

Re: Sound card with S/PDIF input (and output) wanted

[Swisher, Karl]

On Sat, 03 Jul 1999, Christian Worm Mortensen wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Can it really be true that there exists no useable sound card (except for
> the in Europe very expensive Turtle Beach Pinnacle card) with S/PDIF input
> that is supported by Linux? Either by OSS/free or ALSA. The only thing I
> have found is:
> 
> 1) Turlte Beach Fiji - but that card seems to have been withdrawn from the
> market
> 2) Hoontechs Multisound cards - but theese seems to resample all incomming
> data to their own 44.1Khz clock.
> 
> 
> Christian

I'm new to Linux so I don't  know all the options we have yet.  I have the
Sound  Blaster Live.   The drivers for this card under Linux are not available
yet.   I went ahead and purchased the card knowing I couldn't run it fully under
Linux at this time.   I believe the card will be supported under Linux because
it is a great card and in my opinion Creative will sell many .  You get all the
analog, synth, and midi feature plus digital I/O for around $200US.  I do use
the card on the other OS until they get the drivers worked out.   Open Sound
System (OSS) and Creative both are working on drivers for this card.

Thanks
Karl

Re: Sound card with S/PDIF input (and output) wanted

[Christian Worm Mortensen]

Hi,

On Sun, 4 Jul 1999, Oliver Helmling wrote:

> > Can it really be true that there exists no useable sound card (except for
> > the in Europe very expensive Turtle Beach Pinnacle card) with S/PDIF input
> > that is supported by Linux? Either by OSS/free or ALSA. The only thing I
> > have found is:

> what do you mean with S/PDIF?

I mean Sony/Philips Digital Interface Format (as far as I remember :-) ).

> normally OSS supports quite a lot of soundcards.

Yes - I asked if anyone know any supported soundcard except for the
mentioned that can read data from an S/PDIF port without modifing it.

> i´ve got a soundblaster awe 64 and it works great.

As far as I know it has no digital input and if it has I am sure that it
spoils what it reads on it.


Christian

Re: Sound card with S/PDIF input (and output) wanted

[Oliver Helmling]

Christian Worm Mortensen wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Can it really be true that there exists no useable sound card (except for
> the in Europe very expensive Turtle Beach Pinnacle card) with S/PDIF input
> that is supported by Linux? Either by OSS/free or ALSA. The only thing I
> have found is:
> 
> 1) Turlte Beach Fiji - but that card seems to have been withdrawn from the
> market
> 2) Hoontechs Multisound cards - but theese seems to resample all incomming
> data to their own 44.1Khz clock.
> 
> Christian
hi christian,
what do you mean with S/PDIF? normally OSS supports quite a lot of
soundcards. i´ve got a soundblaster awe 64 and it works great. which
distribution do you have? S.u.S.E. ships with a free commercial version
of OSS (ver 3.8).
-- 

Grüße
	Oliver

Re: Sound card with S/PDIF input (and output) wanted

[Kristian Soerensen]

On Sun, 4 Jul 1999, Oliver Helmling wrote:

> Can it really be true that there exists no useable sound card (except for
> the in Europe very expensive Turtle Beach Pinnacle card) with S/PDIF input
> that is supported by Linux? Either by OSS/free or ALSA. The only thing I
> have found is:

I have been looking around for such a card myself for quite some time. The
only one with a reasonable price/performance point that's also readily
available is the SB Live. The only problem is that the Linux drivers are
still in early beta. http://developer.soundblaster.com/linux/

It puzzles me that no more people are interested in using Linux for MP3
encoding and recording purposes. Maybe the market just haven't caught up
with the demand yet. I'm going to use that card to replace CD's, LP's etc.
with MP3's at home so that I can mix and match the music I want to listen
to without having to stop whatever I'm doing to switch records all the
time.


--------------------------------------------------------------
The Linux Resource Exchange             http://www.linuxrx.com
Kristian Elof Soerensen    elof@image.dk     (+45) 45 93 92 02 

Re: Sound card with S/PDIF input (and output) wanted

[Rick Marshall]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1823 bytes --]

Kristian Soerensen wrote:

> On Sun, 4 Jul 1999, Oliver Helmling wrote:
>
> > Can it really be true that there exists no useable sound card (except for
> > the in Europe very expensive Turtle Beach Pinnacle card) with S/PDIF input
> > that is supported by Linux? Either by OSS/free or ALSA. The only thing I
> > have found is:
>
> I have been looking around for such a card myself for quite some time. The
> only one with a reasonable price/performance point that's also readily
> available is the SB Live. The only problem is that the Linux drivers are
> still in early beta. http://developer.soundblaster.com/linux/
>
> It puzzles me that no more people are interested in using Linux for MP3
> encoding and recording purposes. Maybe the market just haven't caught up
> with the demand yet. I'm going to use that card to replace CD's, LP's etc.
> with MP3's at home so that I can mix and match the music I want to listen
> to without having to stop whatever I'm doing to switch records all the
> time.

I think the availability of good free software makes it easy without special
hardware. I use grip, and encoder for ripping and encoding and xmms with mpg123
for playing. Works great. grip even does automated enquiries from cddb for cd
titles and tracks. Slower than dedicated hardware, but works great.

Rick

>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> The Linux Resource Exchange            http://www.linuxrx.com
> Kristian Elof Soerensen    elof@image.dk     (+45) 45 93 92 02

--
mailto:rjm@herzfeld.com.au <=> RICK MARSHALL <=> http://www.herzfeld.com.au/isl
   International Software Laboratories Pty Limited - Australia, New Zealand
     Footwear: Retail Management, Point of Sale, Wholesale, Manufacturing
    (-: All in Linux :-)   (-: On the Web :-)   (-: All in UNIBASE 5GL :-)



[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2355 bytes --]

Re: Sound card with S/PDIF input (and output) wanted

[Kristian Soerensen]

> > It puzzles me that no more people are interested in using Linux for MP3
> > encoding and recording purposes. Maybe the market just haven't caught up
> > with the demand yet. I'm going to use that card to replace CD's, LP's etc.
> > with MP3's at home so that I can mix and match the music I want to listen
> > to without having to stop whatever I'm doing to switch records all the
> > time.
> 
> I think the availability of good free software makes it easy without special
> hardware. I use grip, and encoder for ripping and encoding and xmms with mpg123
> for playing. Works great. grip even does automated enquiries from cddb for cd
> titles and tracks. Slower than dedicated hardware, but works great.

It won't work with LP's, cassette tapes, radio broadcasts etc. unless the
sound equipment is sitting right next to the computer. For longer
distances such as is found in most homes etc. you will need the A->D
conversion to happen as close as possible to the analog equipment and
transport the sound in digital form from there to the computer where it's
to be mp3 encoded and stored.

Neither will your proposal work for the many digital audio sources such as
DAT, minidisc, digital musical instruments etc.


Not all people lives in tiny dorm rooms or have both their computers and
their HiFi mounted in the same 19" rack. I surely don't want my home to
look like an average server room/sound studio just to get decent quality
A->D conversion and mp3 encoding of various sound sources.

Actually I want to get all the benefits of modern technology including
getting rid of the tons of boxes and kilometers of wires that was
neccesary with pre. mp3 audio.


-------------------  http://www.image.dk/~elof  ----------------------
Kristian Elof Soerensen      elof@image.dk           (+45) 45 93 92 02 

Re: Sound card with S/PDIF input (and output) wanted

[Christian Worm Mortensen]

Hi,

>I have been looking around for such a card myself for quite some time. The
>only one with a reasonable price/performance point that's also readily
>available is the SB Live. The only problem is that the Linux drivers are
>still in early beta. http://developer.soundblaster.com/linux/

I am affraid SB Live is not an option for me. First, it resampels input to
it's own 48Khz clock and maybe even do worse things. Second, the drivers are
made by Creative and the source is not released.


Christian

Re: Sound card with S/PDIF input (and output) wanted

[Kai Vehmanen]

On Sun, 4 Jul 1999, Kristian Soerensen wrote:

> It puzzles me that no more people are interested in using Linux for MP3
> encoding and recording purposes. Maybe the market just haven't caught up
> with the demand yet. I'm going to use that card to replace CD's, LP's etc.

Well, I think most people just rip the tracks straight from CDs. 
It's by far the easiest way to go. Also, you can use a CD-burner
for digital output (slow, but works). When it comes to recording,
16bits at 44,1kHz just isn't enough. I'd really like to see
a reasonably priced, 20bit/48kHz(or more) card with Linux support 
and digital io-jacks. But I guess I'm going to have to wait 
for long... 

It's funny how slow the soundcard development has been when 
compared to other computer components. I'm now using
a GUS MAX and a AWE64Gold for my recording work. Although 
GUS is at least two or three years older than the AWE, 
it can handle 16bit full-duplex while AWE64Gold can't (!).
Of course there are the overly-priced pro-cards, but 
they can't be used as an excuse forever.

-- 
Kai Vehmanen ----------------------------- CS, University of Turku, Finland
 : email                       mailto:kaiv@wakkanet.fi
 : projects, home page, etc    http://www.wakkanet.fi/~kaiv/
 : ambient-idm-rock-... mp3/ra http://www.wakkanet.fi/~kaiv/sculpscape.html

Re: Sound card with S/PDIF input (and output) wanted

[Hines, Jim]

> It's funny how slow the soundcard development has been when 
> compared to other computer components. I'm now using
> a GUS MAX and a AWE64Gold for my recording work. Although 
> GUS is at least two or three years older than the AWE, 
> it can handle 16bit full-duplex while AWE64Gold can't (!).
> Of course there are the overly-priced pro-cards, but 
> they can't be used as an excuse forever.
>

Huh?! I thought that the AWE64 is a 16 bit full-duplex card. That's the main
reason I purchased mine. Did I really screw up here or what?


Jim Hines
400mhz AMDk6-2 98mb
RedHat 5.2 (2.0.36)

Re: Sound card with S/PDIF input (and output) wanted

[Paco]

> 
> It's funny how slow the soundcard development has been when 
> compared to other computer components. 

Part of this is slow develpoment is due to human hearing limitations.  I
may be slightly off on the numbers, but I believe the human ear will 'max
out' at 50KHz sample rate.  Anything above and beyond this rate creates
absolutely *no* improvement in sound quality to the human ear.  We can't
tell a difference.  This is why many of the cards have frequency ceilings
of 44.1KHz or 48KHz.

The other part of this slow development is a 'supply/demand' issue.  Most
people don't really even *need* a full-dpulex card at all.  They use
their sound cards for games/MP3s/etc (ie, only *playing* sound files).  A
_small_ percentage of them ever do any recording, and an even _smaller_
percentage of *these* people do recording that requires full-duplex
operation.

We here on this mailing list are a small small small sub-culture
(especially since we use linux in the first place), and while *we* may all
like to have a nice 50KHz 20-bit full-duplex soundcard with 8 digital i/o 
ports, the other 99% of computer users couldn't care less.  This creates a
small demand for such a card.  So small, in fact, that the price of such a
product *must* be astronomically large, just to cover the research and
development costs that went into the design of the card.

> I'm now using
> a GUS MAX and a AWE64Gold for my recording work. Although 
> GUS is at least two or three years older than the AWE, 
> it can handle 16bit full-duplex while AWE64Gold can't (!).

This was done to make the AWE64's more affordable.  The second audio
device in the AWE64 is an 8-bit device.  (The AWE64Gold cost more than the
AWE64 only because they have gold-plated the bus contacts.  It's the exact
same components other than that.  I use the regular AWE64 because I'm a
cheap-skate.)

Granted, the output of this second audio device leaves much to be desired,
but the only person who ever hears the sound out of this second device (in
my case, at least) is me.  I do multi-track recording, so I have to listen
to a scratchy bass guitar through the 8-bit device as I lay down the
rhythm guitar through the 16-bit device, but I see this as only a minor
annoyance since the final mix-down of all the tracks that I record sounds
just fine when it's all said and done.

The AWE64 packs alot of bang for the buck, IMHO.  I can do all of my
recording with this one sound card.  I have my complaints about the card,
too, so don't get me wrong, but you can't expect professional quality
recording from a card that only costs $35 brand new.  You get what you pay
for.

Chad Walker
Digital Systems Design Engineer
HAL Computer Systems

Re: Sound card with S/PDIF input (and output) wanted

[Kai Vehmanen]

On Mon, 12 Jul 1999, Paco wrote:

>> It's funny how slow the soundcard development has been when 
>> compared to other computer components. 
> Part of this is slow develpoment is due to human hearing limitations.  I
> may be slightly off on the numbers, but I believe the human ear will 'max
> out' at 50KHz sample rate.  Anything above and beyond this rate creates
> absolutely *no* improvement in sound quality to the human ear.  We

Well, the upper limit for human hearing is around 20kHz (although
there are exceptions, even over 22kHz!). And as Nyquist's sampling
theorem says, 40kHz is enough to represent a 20kHz signal. But
in reality, it isn't so simple. In sound synthesis, the lack of 
frequency head-room when using 44.1/48kHz sampling freqs causes
problems. Same goes for sample resolution. 16bit is fine for normal
playback, but when you are recording, using 20bit samples helps 
enormously as it gives more head-room. You can record safely without
clipping and still have a decent dynamic range. 

> The other part of this slow development is a 'supply/demand' issue.  Most
> people don't really even *need* a full-dpulex card at all.  They use
> their sound cards for games/MP3s/etc (ie, only *playing* sound files).  A
> _small_ percentage of them ever do any recording, and an even _smaller_

Well, situation is changing. Internet phone-systems, voice control 
(Os/2 v3.0 aka Merlin brought this to the masses), multitrack
recording, using you computer for listening music (mp3s), format
conversions (vinyl -> cd transfers), ... Well, not all need
full-duplex, but still, normal people might want to do these things.

> Granted, the output of this second audio device leaves much to be desired,
> but the only person who ever hears the sound out of this second device (in
> my case, at least) is me.  I do multi-track recording, so I have to listen
> to a scratchy bass guitar through the 8-bit device as I lay down the
> rhythm guitar through the 16-bit device, but I see this as only a minor
> annoyance since the final mix-down of all the tracks that I record sounds
> just fine when it's all said and done.

Okay, you can do multi-track recording, but what if you wanted to 
use your computer as a FX-processor? 8bit just isn't enough for 
this. And the otherway around, you might want to recycle the tracks 
you recorded through some external fx-gear. This too, definately 
needs 16bit full-duplex.

> The AWE64 packs alot of bang for the buck, IMHO.  I can do all of my
> recording with this one sound card.  I have my complaints about the card,
> too, so don't get me wrong, but you can't expect professional quality
> recording from a card that only costs $35 brand new.  You get what you pay
> for.

I can say all that about my GUSMAX, but it cost less and I bought
it two or three years ago. It just sounds unbelievable. At the 
time I bought my GUS, I had a 486 with 8MB of memory...

Ok, I admit that AWE64 has better MIDI-features and the DAC isn't
bad either, but still... hopefully this will change soon.

-- 
Kai Vehmanen ----------------------------- CS, University of Turku, Finland
 : email                                 mailto:kaiv@wakkanet.fi
 : home page, projects, etc              http://www.wakkanet.fi/~kaiv/
 : my music (ambient-idm-rock-...mp3/ra) http://www.wakkanet.fi/sculpscape/