On Mon, 28 Apr 2014, Ivan K wrote:
Isn't M-Audio going to have to eventually make versions of their sound cards for PCI-e ? What are they waiting for?
There are very few cards for pcie. M-audio appears to have decided USB/FW is the safe way to go. Their line of PCI cards seems to depend on what is left in stock, there have been no delta 1010s or delta 44s for a few years now. The are still 1010LTs and D66s, but I think once they are gone they will make no more "internal" cards. The reality is that even with an internal card, a BOB or cable is needed. With USB or FW the BOB becomes the whole IF and there is less digital noise to deal with.
My opinion is that the "cheap" option will be USB... with (possible) problems :P and then FW which means adding a FW card anyway, but better stability and expansion. PCIe cards will be the high end costing more than the rest of the machine for most of us. (1K plus for 8 i/o at line level with no mic pre)
Linux support for new HW seems to be on the wane too. Used to be all audio was addon cards... and the internal audio when it did show up (AC97) was poor quality. So there were a lot of "ordinary" users who still added cards. The audio quality of the HDA chip set has got to the point most people can't tell anything better, and those who can have HDMI out in digital format anyway. so there is now a lot less push to support everything out there. The audio crowd is a pretty small segment of the Linux user crowd anymore. On the up side, there are some more IF makers who are putting out linux drivers.
-- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net
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