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Senate
User

Joined: 25 Nov 2003

Posted: Thu Dec 18 2003 18:44
im thinking of the EWS88 MT multitracking card (400$ though thats the only problem) what im seriously looking at is dmx 6fire, mainly because the price and i think that it has more then enough inputs/outputs for me.. anyone have any ideas?

Inge
Man-At-Arms

Joined: 04 May 2003
Location: Nieuw Lekkerland @ Holland

Posted: Thu Dec 18 2003 19:28
I have the 6fire, but it has only one line in simultaniously. With the frontbay you got three line outs and one regular line in, but I only have the cheap-ass lt version The 6fire is ideal for the environment in which I use it, since I don't use any external devices, and only use the analogue & spdif line in for simple recording activities. It has an amazing sound quality, good asio support, and a very clean and intuitive mixer. Inge
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Senate
User

Joined: 25 Nov 2003

Posted: Thu Dec 18 2003 21:07
does the non-cheap version only have one input? also what external devices for example? what about digital? and what is spdif line in? the only thing i need the soundcard for is like recording vocals, i can do anything else myself with a mutli-track mixer..any more comments?

Inge
Man-At-Arms

Joined: 04 May 2003
Location: Nieuw Lekkerland @ Holland

Posted: Fri Dec 19 2003 00:18
Spdif: digital data transport, used by minidisc players. I use it to record sound to the pc from minidisc and vice versa. The lt version of the terratec has three line outs, one line in (one can choose per recording between mic, analogue line in and spdif line in). The full version (with frontbay) has three line outs, one line in (one can choose between mic, analogue line in, spdif in, coax in and phono in). The drawback of the frontbay is that - due to the longer data cable - interference on the audio signal between frontbay and soundcard might occur. External devices: samples, synths, anything you can imagine where you need multiple devices sampled at the same time. Digital (as written above) is only available on the version with the frontbay in both coax as spdif. The lt version comes with spdif only. If you only need to record one external source at a time (so, in your case, vocals), you only need one line in. //sidenote Senate: I understand that you have a lot of questions, but have you ever considered actually diving into the matter yourself? I'm not trying to be too harsh, but five pages to explain you what you need for a soundcard, and still new questions seems rather odd to me. As you will see throughout this forum, I'm more than willing to ask any question passing by, but one might expect participants to do some research themselves Inge
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Senate
User

Joined: 25 Nov 2003

Posted: Fri Dec 19 2003 14:50
I do understand what your saying, considering i have asked alot of questions on several matters. But on a side note, i have done research by myself. Considering ive never used any of these soundcards before, questions are going to be there (maybe shouldnt be this many). Regardless, opinions of people who have used the cards im looking at is a good thing. I apologize for any inconvience

Senate
User

Joined: 25 Nov 2003

Posted: Fri Dec 19 2003 14:52
also as another SIDE NOTE i might add that i dont see how it took you 5 pages to explain anything to me, if i didnt say anything until the 4th page out of 5.

Senate
User

Joined: 25 Nov 2003

Posted: Fri Dec 19 2003 14:58
besides these questions what external devices for example? what about digital? and what is spdif line in? i could have answered myself, so i dont even know why i asked. anyways, if it bothers you that much just ignore me. Im not saying thats what you should do. I just dont want to inconvience you in anyway. Once again, i apologize.

Inge
Man-At-Arms

Joined: 04 May 2003
Location: Nieuw Lekkerland @ Holland

Posted: Sat Dec 20 2003 18:01
@Senate: you are right. I mixed up two or three threads here. My apologies for that. The point I try (and tried) to make is that some questions just rather make me think of laziness then real interest. As you can read throughout this forum, I'm more than willing to answer even the most bizarre questions, but there are limits to it. I understand that you are interested in a possible new card, but your follow-up questions made me think that you didn't even visited the url's mentioned. Eitherway, don't let me scare you Ask away; if I neglect, others will surely answer And trust me on the terratec thingie: if the only external source is a mic (or only one external source per time), and you use a lot of audio applications but still need sound with all basic windows applications, the dmx6fire is the card to go for. Inge
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Senate
User

Joined: 25 Nov 2003

Posted: Sat Dec 20 2003 19:57
i perfectly understand, after reading my posts throughly i already had seen that i was being lazy before you just mentioned it. I will try to refrain from posting until i seriously can not find any answers. Once again thanks alot for the help, this sound card will surely help the quality of my recordings.. Thanks again

Enonimis
Regular

Joined: 05 May 2003
Location: Canton Ohio, USA

Posted: Mon Dec 19 2005 23:38

Inge wrote:

@Senate: you are right. I mixed up two or three threads here. My apologies for that.

The point I try (and tried) to make is that some questions just rather make me think of laziness then real interest. As you can read throughout this forum, I'm more than willing to answer even the most bizarre questions, but there are limits to it. I understand that you are interested in a possible new card, but your follow-up questions made me think that you didn't even visited the url's mentioned.

Eitherway, don't let me scare you Smile

Ask away; if I neglect, others will surely answer Very Happy

And trust me on the terratec thingie: if the only external source is a mic (or only one external source per time), and you use a lot of audio applications but still need sound with all basic windows applications, the dmx6fire is the card to go for.

Inge

Bahahaha Inge can be such an ass, eh?

~Enon

If you do not agree with my opinions, you are wrong. If you do agree with my opinions you are drunk.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://elrick-enonimis.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

LoneStar
Registered User

Joined: 04 Apr 2004
Location: Somewhere in Germany

Posted: Mon Dec 26 2005 08:48

Inge wrote:

I'd say the biggest bottleneck in todays computers are the HDD's, so if you can get a SATA drive by leaving out one CPU then I'd say go for it, since a SATA drive is just about the fastest you can go without turning over to SCSI right now. And if you make sure you get a Motherboard with SATA-RAID support (or a addon SATA-card with RAID), then you have the option of adding a second SATA-drive later on, and putting it in a RAID config to theoretically double your disc speed.
But no matter what you do, don't go for ATA100. No use getting a slower drive, when a ATA133 would cost only a couple of dollars more.
Also, I'd recommend getting as much RAM as you can afford 512MB almost being a minimum.

hope that helped Smile

I don't want to start any discussion, but the difference between ata 100 and ata 133 is very minimal, and ata 133 will restrict you to buying Maxtor drives (since they developed it and are the only using party). S-ata is nice, a good & stable board is just as important. If using AMD, go for nforce 2 (asus A7N8X (search for a latest revision) is doing wonderfully fine) and dual channel memory. Nvidia is beating VIA quite hard at the moment (even the KT600 is performing less well).

Just to mention, S-ATA drives are NOT any faster than P-ATA ones. The interface being faster doesn't mean the harddrive is faster as well. Infact both types of hdds are EXACTLY the same, just the interface is different (and the cables are thinner Wink

Sunbuster
Registered User

Joined: 05 May 2003
Location: Finland

Posted: Mon Dec 26 2005 10:57
Indeed, S-ATA is basically P-ATA in a new shell. It does give some increases in speed, but it's so small you will not likely notice. The biggest benefit with S-ATA is the thinner and longer cables, which means you can easier route them in the case so that they don't restrict airflow. Also, although it's not officially in the standard, a lot of manufacturers include Native Command Queing on their S-ATA I drives, which basically means less wear and tear on the drive since the drive can stack up a bunch of commands and then decide which to execute first. This could also bring a slight speed increase in seek times. To actually use this you'd need an interface (as an addon card or directly on the mobo) that supports NCQ too, and I'm not sure how common this is yet. Now if you would get a S-ATA II interface and hdd, then that should already give you a speed increase beyond the theoretical one. Don't know about the availability of those though. Personally I'd say go for a S-ATA drive, given that S-ATA drives cost about as much as an equivalent P-ATA drive these days. For an actual speed increase, consider putting up a RAID array.

Inge
Man-At-Arms

Joined: 04 May 2003
Location: Nieuw Lekkerland @ Holland

Posted: Mon Dec 26 2005 11:38
First generation sata was 150mbit/s, with pata being capped at 133mbit/s. That difference, in practice, is not significant. New-generation disks (with a 300mbit/s interface and ncq support) will give better results, but I fail to see how a disk can create the bottleneck. I'm pretty confident that current cpu's (and the bandwidth of data communication between cpu, ram and mainboard) will be the bottleneck. Maybe dual-core or multi-cpu configurations can change that though. Oh. I just see that the original statement was made years back. Nevermind.
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LoneStar
Registered User

Joined: 04 Apr 2004
Location: Somewhere in Germany

Posted: Tue Dec 27 2005 19:23

Inge wrote:

First generation sata was 150mbit/s, with pata being capped at 133mbit/s. That difference, in practice, is not significant. New-generation disks (with a 300mbit/s interface and ncq support) will give better results, but I fail to see how a disk can create the bottleneck. I'm pretty confident that current cpu's (and the bandwidth of data communication between cpu, ram and mainboard) will be the bottleneck. Maybe dual-core or multi-cpu configurations can change that though.

Oh. I just see that the original statement was made years back. Nevermind.

Hm.
Given that RAM interfaces have a bandwidth of a few GB per second, and cpus are able to process some GB per second as well, a hdd which transfers maybe 50MB/s actually IS a bottleneck.

Also, you seem to have gotten something wrong there.
Imagine the interface of hdds could handle 133 or 150 Mbit/s, as you said. That would equal 16.625 resp. 18.75 MB/s, which is a bit slow for transferring the 40-50MB/s modern hdds supply, don't you think Wink

Those figures rather give the bus transfer rate in MB/s.
As you might have noticed, even the old ATA100 bus would be enough to cope with the most modern hdds. The rest is marketing.

Inge
Man-At-Arms

Joined: 04 May 2003
Location: Nieuw Lekkerland @ Holland

Posted: Tue Dec 27 2005 19:54
Woops. Yes. Mbit should be Mbyte (link). Thanks for pointing that out. I furthermore expressed myself incorrect concerning why the cpu/bus should be the bottleneck. My point is that upper limit of the amount of operations that can be performed by the cpu is more likely to be the bottleneck of the total capability of the computer than the bandwidth available for the hard disk. Ofcourse, this all depends on what you exactly do with the material that is being used: if you play back 32 wave- and videofiles without processing them, then maybe the harddisk might be the limiting factor. Nevertheless, with audio composition other factors become more prominent (such as cpu cycles consumed by vst's, applied fx, and whatnotmore). Therefore: buy a Atari 800XL and be happy.
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