On Tue, 17 Jun 2014, Ivan K wrote:
My current audio card is a an M-Audio 2496, which has RCA and S/PDIF inputs. Due to the phasing out of PCI slots, it seems that USB interfaces are what most people are choosing to purchase these days. However, I was thinking about getting a microphone pre-amp with an s/pdif output. My thinking is:
That is what I do. I have an ART USBDualTube Pre which also has s/pdif out. The only thing I don't like about the unit is that there is no external sync on it.
(1) One will always be able to buy PCIe cards in the future with S/PDIF
I am not seeing this... in my price range :)
However, it seems that the options for such a pre-amp are limited. I found the following items: (1) ART DPS-II Digital/Tube $265 The price does not seem unreasonable for a quality pre-amp. This thing does have a lot of knobs though, and therefore probably has more functionality than I know what to do with.
I have been happy with my unit which is simpler but that one has clock in. I have heard that inout impedance is good for ribon mics too. I can't speak of the quality as I have not used one. There are really not so many knobs as you suppose:
- input imedance - tube stage gain - output level - Phantom power - phase (not needed for mostly mono recording, but if you ever do vocals and guitar together...) - V3 is a lot about how distorted the signal gets ;) It allows The tube to act as a limiter. They call it valve voicing. It is one of those set it to where it "sounds nice" things.
(2) Samson C-Valve Tube Microphone Preamp $99 This item is discontinued but still available on amazon. This item did not review well on this list, but ... it is inexpensive.
Don't know.
So what do people think of this plan? Or do people recommend that I just go ahead and get a USB interface?
USB support is up and down (I see a lot of alsa bug reports) minimum latency will be a bit higher than with a pci card. I would tend to choose firewire over USB, though the cost is a little higher. They seem to be more solid/stable.
As I have done the same thing (I made sure my new MB had PCI slots), I am probably biased :)
USB interupts and internal hubs make finding the right port to use a little more difficult, but I was able to get mine running with jack at 64/2 in a stable fashion... The ICE1712 PCI will do jack at 16/2 with no xruns wich is nice for using it for live effects/midi but probably not really needed for recording.
-- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net
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