gioved?, 14 ottobre 2004 alle 12:47:25, Alejandro Lopez ha scritto: > The only other thing is I may need to buy a decent soundcard for this > PC. It should have a GM synth (nothing special since I guess I'll be > using soft synths anyway but I don't want to run a synth just to write > a couple of arrangements), one stereo output and one stereo input both > with good overall audio quality. Seemingly, the current trend is > towards either USB 2.0, firewire or PCI. A colleague has just told me > that USB 2.0 is supported by the Linux kernel starting from the latest > version (2.6 I think?) only. Since music distributions are based on > other distributions, chances are that they now run the 2.4 kernel or > maybe older. Does that make sense or am I talking complete b*ll*cks? > Also, this friend has heard about drops happening with audio over USB, > but apparently this was on a Mac and the USB device was a hard disk > rather than a soundcard. Still, he seems to think that USB 2.0 is not > as good option as firewire for audio. (Which reminds me of SCSI vs IDE > drives for audio a few years back, yes SCSI was the serious option for > a couple of years but it was an 80% more expensive as well, and shortly > afterwards IDE started to go "fast enough" and cheaper.) Is firewire > better? Is it more expensive? Also, how does it compare to PCI? Lastly, > if any of you has bought a soundcard (recently so the card is still in > production) which is reasonably similar to what I need (wouldn't mind > if it's slightly better, say 4 mono inputs and 4 mono outputs or > something) and has succeed with having it running under a Linux based > music studio, I'd be grateful if you drop a line. As far as I know firewire based audio cards still aren't supported by ALSA, and USB devices aren't that good, especially with jack (a sound server which you probably *want* to run ;) Also onboard synths are difficult to find nowadays on pro or semi-pro hardware, for this is better to stick to an hw external expander or a soft-synth like qsynth or timidity. Among PCI cards, one of the best value for price is IMHO the m-audio audiophile 24/96, which in europe you can find at around 100 eur. It is a pure stereo card based on the well supported envy24 chip, it has s/pdif I/O, analog I/O and MIDI I/O : http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Audiophile2496-main.html I don't owe one, but I have recommended it to a pair of friends and they seem to have liked it :) As for 4 I/O, the only one I know is the m-audio delta 44 (around 155 euro in europe, but *without* s/pdif and MIDI): http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Delta44-main.html the delta 66 is the same as the 44 but with s/pdif (~ 190 euro). Then, the cheapest (of which I'm aware of) 8 I/O interface is the staudio dsp2000 c-port (around 400 euro in EU): http://www.staudio.com/products/dsp2000.html > Many thanks!! HTH ciao PS: I've taken current prices from http://www.thomann.de , with italian tax rates applied. -- Emiliano Grilli Linux user #209089 http://www.emillo.net
