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Some questions on the quality of PC audio cards. I am using a PC for music for both FM (yardcasting) and plan to use the PC for an audio source for a high quailty stereo system in the near future.
Some questions on the quality of PC audio cards. I am using a PC for music for both FM (yardcasting) and plan to use the PC for an audio source for a high quailty stereo system in the near future.
I am using the built in audio card that came with the Asus motherboard on a Win XP Pro machine. I play wav files and 320k MP3s. I mostly use a C Crane FM transmitter, but occasionally experiment with others.
I have found the audio quality to be very good on an inexpensive Sony boombox and the car radio.
A friend of mine who is a professional broadcast engineer told me that his stations all use Digigram Audio Cards. (They also use Audio Vault software.) At $400 these Digigrams are not cheap. They do have XLR inputs, but that is probably overkill for my setup.
Questions:
Will I hear a noticeable improvement in audio quality in either my “air sound” on the FM yardcast or on the house stereo system by upgrading to these expensive Digigrams?
Or, is it worth considering an upgrade to some other sound card that is less expensive?
Or should I just stick to the on-board sound that comes on the Asus motherboard?
Total posts : 45366XLR inputs rock, if that’s what your gear is set up to use and/or if you use long (more than say 20 ft) cable runs since they help to keep noise and loss down.
But for yardcasting, it’d probably be a bit “over the top” to convert your gear to it. For professional studios it serves needs you probably don’t have to worry about.
As far as soundcard upgrades, it depends a lot on what gear you use and what software and so on. Some automation or DSP software won’t like the “on the mommyboard” soundcards, or may not get along with specific ones. But if the one you work with is getting along with the stuff you use and sounding good, then that isn’t anything you need to worry about.
Sound quality is not a purely objective thing.. You need to consider whether an upgrade will make a difference you can hear. Usually for FM transmitting, you’re cutting off all the frequencies of the audio above 16 khz anyway, so while a really good soundcard will have a lot of frequency response, you aren’t going to use it anyway. Also what is it going to be listened to on? If it’s a boombox or maybe a car radio, most of them aren’t audiophile gear at all, so you can go to a lot of expense “making it as perfect as possible” when a real listener can’t even hear the subtlety.
400$ soundcard into a 30$ boombox via a transmitter is still only going to be able to sound as good as the 30$ boombox *can* sound.
If it sounds good on what you are going to be listening to it on, and it is working good, then “upgrading” becomes kind of a dubious concept. The listening ear always has the final say.
Now upgrading may be desirable/necessary for running into your high quality stereo.. But what’s good for the stereo and what’s good for going out over the transmitter can be very different things.
Daniel
Total posts : 45366Great take, Daniel, and good points all the way around.
My one tiny additional comment would be that it can be helpful to make some connector choices for extended use.
Specifically, if you’re going to have a soundcard in your audio chain for full time broadcast activities, especially unattended operation, it’s nice to get away from the 1/8″ tip, ring and sleeve connectors on many of the low end units.
Depending on the manufacture and condition of the 1/8″ mini jacks and plugs, you can sometimes develop noisy, loose connections at your sound card interface.
The main board native sound resources can really be a pain, because the connectors are sometimes built right into the chassis of a small form factor ATX case. Others use a slot card bracket to provide a connector, and even a PCI slot card mounted sound chip usually offers the 1/8″ connetors.
I prefer the decades old RCA connectors if possible, as they make a better connection. Depending on your inclination you can purchace a sound card with these types of connectors (some vers of sound blaster audigy have these IIRC), or if you’re really brave, you can solder new connectors to a harness and mount that to your main board header or PCI card.
Experimental broadcasting for a better tomorrow!
Total posts : 45366Agreed, scwis.
But it’s not hard to make a patchbox with any metal enclosure and fit it with all the sorts of high-z connectors one might want/need and have a nice cable to plug into the 1/8″ jack.. Gold plated connectors help quite a bit, and if one wants to run some low-z, there’s impedance transformers.
Impedance transformers are a bit more loss than one might like on a mic line because of the transformer itself, but if one is using the line in and out of a soundcard and connecting to line level devices, line level is high enough that the losses will be mostly ignorable.
That helps a bit with the connector and compatibility problems.
But when the talk goes to soldering irons and wires and connectors, often some of the newer folks run for the hills. LOL
Daniel
Total posts : 45366Daniel and SCWIS,
Many thanks for your thoughts and insights.
[quote=Rattan]Also what is it going to be listened to on? If it’s a boombox or maybe a car radio, most of them aren’t audiophile gear at all, so you can go to a lot of expense “making it as perfect as possible” when a real listener can’t even hear the subtlety.
400$ soundcard into a 30$ boombox via a transmitter is still only going to be able to sound as good as the 30$ boombox *can* sound.
If it sounds good on what you are going to be listening to it on, and it is working good, then “upgrading” becomes kind of a dubious concept. The listening ear always has the final say.
Now upgrading may be desirable/necessary for running into your high quality stereo.. But what’s good for the stereo and what’s good for going out over the transmitter can be very different things.
Daniel
[/quote]
Maybe I should have been more specific in my first post, but sometimes you just hesitate at creating a “wikipedia length” description to a post…
Yard casting (to a car stereo or $100 – 150 boombox, not the $30 variety 😉 and maybe a Tivoli or something similar down the road…) is really the SECONDARY objective. (Yardcasting would be like a “simulcast.”) At the risk of going a little off topic for this forum, I came here first since I have come to respect many of the opinions of many members that I have read here over time.
The PRIMARY objective will be for the PC sound card as an audio input to a high quality stereo with high quality three way or two way speakers in multiple rooms of the house. Instead of changing CD’s in a 300 disc CD jukebox or listening to XM though the stereo (which I don’t really don’t want to do), I want to listen to playlists that I have created after converting several hundred CD’s to the computer hard drive (as wav’s and 320k MP3’s).
Right now I mostly use Win Media 10, which has great music (and media) database functionality, but has other problems. I have been trying Roxio 9.
I have had a tough time trying to get Direttore or Sound Solution (which I learned about on this forum) to work well for me.
I suppose that any input on audio software that has a great database built-in (at least as good as Win Media’s) would be welcomed too, although my primary post here was on the sound card hardware.
Many thanks.
Total posts : 45366Soundcard upgrade would be more of a priority for you than for some, then. I don’t keep up as much on the current audiophile hardware as some here do. For a really good stereo system, you’ll probably want a better soundcard than came stock with your machine, if only for the noise floor and frequency response.
Using the computer as a sound source for your system has a lot of potential, but the sound can only be as good as the weakest link in the chain. With 320k mp3s and a nice stereo, you’re probably right and the weakest link would be your soundcard.
I use Sound Solution as a DSP with WinAmp or Sam2. I’ve yet to get it really working right with Zara, though, and I’m tending more lately to Zara for transmitting because I like how it handles scheduled events like news and weather feeds.
Sound Solution, like any DSP, is cool if you lack the hardware and have the ram to spare. But with good source mp3s and wavs and a good stereo system, how much DSP/effect are you really going to want? Things like compression, specialized eq and etc are more handy for music that’s going out over the air, where they can help make up for the compromises that are necessary because of bandwidth, keeping a good strong sounding modulation going to get more useful range from your carrier and so on. Personally, if I was mainly running hardwire into a really good stereo, I’d probably leave the music as untouched as possible to enjoy the dynamics and environment the artists and engineers worked to make. But hey, you like what you like.
Have you consulted with your audio equipment manufacturer to see if there’s some specific soundcards they’d recommend for what you want to do?
Daniel
Total posts : 45366In September I spent $4000 on 3 sound cards for work.
All are made by Audio Science, all have XLR connectors, and a host of features that are aimed at professional broadcasting. The cheapest was around $500-$600. Hard to beat features if you are using Pro equipment, though I’m not entirely happy with the latest drivers and they really need a book to explain everything that can be done in the drivers.
As far as what you need for your stereo, I would probably find something that has RCA “phono” connectors so that you just need a standard patch cable to get into your system. There are some USB devices that I’ve thought about looking into, and then there are a few of the higher end SoundBlaster (Audigy??) cards that you might want to check out. I think the SB cards would fit your budget.
Total posts : 45366Many thanks for your thoughts and suggestions. I’ll try to check with the manufacturer and maybe research some more. I’ll get back when I have more (which is a way’s off), so please feel free to jump in if something else comes to mind.
Total posts : 45366I use a PC as my source,just upgraded to an Audigy 24 bit PCI card. It claims -100db noise floor and it shows! The audio is much better than the Crystal OEM on board junque! I am also using Zara 1.4 and Sound Solution. Has anyone been able to get the overlap to stop clicking and stuttering in Sound Solution? Thats the only issue I have left and I will be happy with my audio chain.It feeds an EDM-10B and an SSTransAMT3000,plus my homebrewed shortwave transmitter.
On another plane,I ran across a National Radio Month kit LP from 1966 and added the jingles to my playlist. Now I am truly re-living my childhood…LOL Regards,Lee
Total posts : 45366Crystal OEM is soooooooooooooooooooooo bad 🙂
Can you rip that LP to OGG or MP3? Bet others would love it.
In a similar vein:
IN TIME OF EMERGENCY – Public service announcements from the Office of Civil Defense, March 1968.
Love to learn more about that short wave unit 🙂 Photos?
Experimental broadcasting for a better tomorrow!
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