-=Rudy=-
12-26-2002, 10:31 PM
By next summer, I may be putting together a new computer system. Won't be bleeding edge, but will have the horsepower I'm looking for, so I can do some video editing and DVD burning. I have many old 8mm films to transfer to video, and a lot of VHS and Hi8 tapes that are irreplaceable.
My current setup is an AdB Digital PCI input card. It accepts both coaxial and optical digital inputs, and S/PDIF and AES digital formats. It can perform sampling rate conversions on the fly, and provides simultaneous encoding and decoding so you can monitor what you're working on. It also ignored SCMS...a must-have for me, since I want to put the audio portions of a couple of DVDs onto CD, and both my DAT and MD decks complain with "COPY PROHIBIT" flags signalling their surrender.
However, AdB appears to be out of business, and I'm having to use this otherwise excellent card in my old Pentium Pro in an ISA slot. I bought my most recent motherboard with a single ISA slot in it, but either the motherboard, the chipset or Windows XP Pro would not recognize the card properly, and it would never work. (It's almost like the computer was too fast for the card to keep up.)
One thought is that I may buy a used Pentium II computer at an upcoming computer show, drop this card in it, and use this computer strictly in my audio system for digital copying, as well as playback of WAV and MP3 files. But that seems like a step backward. I would much rather get a newer computer in the audio system and be able to use it for DVD playback as well. For editing, I'm looking at putting gigabit ethernet between my main computer and the audio system, so it doesn't take so long to copy files between computers. (I'd love to have one of those Shuttle computers, but I don't know if they have an available PCI slot.)
In my main computer now, I have the Soundblaster Audigy PLatinum. What attracted me was the control panel mounted in a drive bay--it has all sorts of inputs and outputs, even an IR sensor to use a remote control. I was hoping to use this "highly rated" card to put clean digital into my system, but was disappointed to find out that they've put some kind of digital processor in the system, and the bits I'm dumping into it aren't the bits that end up on the hard drive. (It's like they have some kind of limiter throttling back the digital signal to prevent distortion.) It is a nice card for playback though--it will even decode Dolby Digital. Nice to play a DVD on one monitor in full surround while doing my work on the other monitor. :D
My question, though--with AdB Digital gone, what's a good entry-level semi-pro or pro-audio digital card? I see a lot of unfamiliar brands out there, some less expensive, and some way beyond my reach. $200-$300 is a comfortable range for me; beyond that, I'm not apt to buy it because computing hardware becomes obsolete so fast. (I bought my AdB card, refurbished, directly from AdB at a discount.) My main purpose is to dub analog sources to the computer....the card *could* have a good on-board A/D converter, but it could also just be a digital input card like I have now, letting me choose my own A/D converter in the audio system. (I almost prefer to keep analog audio cabling away from the electrically noisy environment of a computer.)
TIA!
My current setup is an AdB Digital PCI input card. It accepts both coaxial and optical digital inputs, and S/PDIF and AES digital formats. It can perform sampling rate conversions on the fly, and provides simultaneous encoding and decoding so you can monitor what you're working on. It also ignored SCMS...a must-have for me, since I want to put the audio portions of a couple of DVDs onto CD, and both my DAT and MD decks complain with "COPY PROHIBIT" flags signalling their surrender.
However, AdB appears to be out of business, and I'm having to use this otherwise excellent card in my old Pentium Pro in an ISA slot. I bought my most recent motherboard with a single ISA slot in it, but either the motherboard, the chipset or Windows XP Pro would not recognize the card properly, and it would never work. (It's almost like the computer was too fast for the card to keep up.)
One thought is that I may buy a used Pentium II computer at an upcoming computer show, drop this card in it, and use this computer strictly in my audio system for digital copying, as well as playback of WAV and MP3 files. But that seems like a step backward. I would much rather get a newer computer in the audio system and be able to use it for DVD playback as well. For editing, I'm looking at putting gigabit ethernet between my main computer and the audio system, so it doesn't take so long to copy files between computers. (I'd love to have one of those Shuttle computers, but I don't know if they have an available PCI slot.)
In my main computer now, I have the Soundblaster Audigy PLatinum. What attracted me was the control panel mounted in a drive bay--it has all sorts of inputs and outputs, even an IR sensor to use a remote control. I was hoping to use this "highly rated" card to put clean digital into my system, but was disappointed to find out that they've put some kind of digital processor in the system, and the bits I'm dumping into it aren't the bits that end up on the hard drive. (It's like they have some kind of limiter throttling back the digital signal to prevent distortion.) It is a nice card for playback though--it will even decode Dolby Digital. Nice to play a DVD on one monitor in full surround while doing my work on the other monitor. :D
My question, though--with AdB Digital gone, what's a good entry-level semi-pro or pro-audio digital card? I see a lot of unfamiliar brands out there, some less expensive, and some way beyond my reach. $200-$300 is a comfortable range for me; beyond that, I'm not apt to buy it because computing hardware becomes obsolete so fast. (I bought my AdB card, refurbished, directly from AdB at a discount.) My main purpose is to dub analog sources to the computer....the card *could* have a good on-board A/D converter, but it could also just be a digital input card like I have now, letting me choose my own A/D converter in the audio system. (I almost prefer to keep analog audio cabling away from the electrically noisy environment of a computer.)
TIA!