Quoting Rick Wright <riwright@xxxxxx>: > Hi All, > > I'm looking for recommendations for a high-quality desktop sound card > that has more than 8 analog inputs and outputs. I plan to use this for > real-time I/O processing of audio signals with JACK, BruteFIR, and other > > audio apps. so it has to be well supported in Linux. I need ~10 > independent (and externally accessible) analog I/O channels right now, > but would like a solution that gives me room to grow. > > I've heard recommendations for Hammerfall products on this list before > as well as syncing multiple ICE1712 cards following instructions here: > http://www.sound-man.co.uk/linuxaudio/ice1712multi.html If money isn't an issue, I would go for RME products. The HDSP9652 will give you 3 x ADAT I/O. One adat will give you 8 channels at 44.1k or 48k or 4 channels at 88.2k or 96k. With that card you would get a total of 24 or 12 channels of both input and output depending on SR. For true "room to grow" ge the HDSP MADI card and the ADI-648 for a total of 8 x ADAT I/O. That'll give you 64 or 32 channels of both input and output depending on SR. Of course, these options leave you to purchase a AD/DA converter of your liking. Which gives you more options, but costs a lot of more money. Wordclocking a bunch of m-audio delta 1010's will be a _lot_ cheaper, but it has it's downsides: you're stuck with the converters (and the options) in the 1010's and you're in for a bit of configuring to get the linked 1010's working. Also, this path needs more PCI slots. Consider this: if you really need 32 channels of 88.2k or 96k, you will need 4 PCI slots. To get to the 64 offered by the MADI option, you will need 8. The HDSP MADI only needs one. Sampo Savolainen
