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Question about running 2 soundcards on the same PC

post #1 of 12
7/28/07 at 3:30pm
Thread Starter 
Hello to you the computer guys!

I have a simple question about the use of 2 soundcards on a new PC I'm planning to build in the comming weeks.

The cards are: E-MU 1212M and the other one is a LynxOne. Can they cohabit peacefully under the same Windows XP system?

Thanks in advance.

Amicalement

PS.

I just want to avoid spending a lot of money on a techno guy trying to match these cards at my local computer shopp....
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post #2 of 12
7/28/07 at 3:40pm
Yes, they can. You can set one as the default sound device under XP, and the other you can dedicate as the sound card for a media player. This is the way I have set up my computer with onboard sound + USB soundcard. The onboard sound is the default sound device in Windows, so system sounds, etc. are played through it, and the USB soundcard is my playback device for MediaMonkey (a music player).
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post #3 of 12
7/28/07 at 3:54pm
Thread Starter 


Merci beaucoup SysteX!!!!

Amicalement
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post #4 of 12
7/28/07 at 6:22pm
Just curious... Why do you need both cards?
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post #5 of 12
7/28/07 at 7:14pm
Any card that is set as DEFAULT in XP will be your gaming card etc. If you prefer to use another for your movies or music set the output of the programs to the card you want.
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post #6 of 12
7/29/07 at 1:02am
how would you set the output?
and why would you still need onboard if you have a sound card already?!
thanks guys
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post #7 of 12
7/29/07 at 2:03am
Quote:
Originally Posted by judas391 View Post
how would you set the output?
and why would you still need onboard if you have a sound card already?!
thanks guys
On the program itself, like Foobar for instance, go to Preferences > Playback > Output. Select what card do you want to use for output.

It's not one onboard and one card, it could be one card for pure music/recording (EMU 1212M, ESI Juli@ etc), the other can be for gaming (Audigy, X-Fi etc)
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post #8 of 12
7/29/07 at 2:28am
I hadn't thought about it, but considering what you can get in a soundcard these days with an optical out (there are a few relatively inexpensive methods) this might be worth looking into for me for music.
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post #9 of 12
7/29/07 at 7:19pm
2 cards is a nice thing to have but is often the by-product of upgrading. The first decent sounding card I had was a av710, later upgraded to RME and kept both in the computer. Allows resampling and upmixing to be turned off on the higher quality card with the older card doing everything else that's non-critical listening. Leaving a $24 soundcard in is virtually no expense and anything sounds better than sound chips on motherboards.

I recently needed both cards in order to copy the output of a DTS audio disc to convert to wav/FLAC. Played DTS disc in Xine, output via av710 toslink to RME as SPDIF input source to record as wav in Audacity (Couldn't figure out how to output directly from Xine to Audacity internal to the computer). The 2 card solution finally stumbled onto a problem to remedy.
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post #10 of 12
7/29/07 at 9:01pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by infinitesymphony View Post
Just curious... Why do you need both cards?
I just wanted two separate analog outputs. And in the end if I'm bored with these cards there's always the digital output/DAC solution...

Amicalement
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post #11 of 12
7/30/07 at 2:10am
I used to have audigy2 for games and emu1212m for music/movies,at the same time.
During that period I had a shortcut in my quick launch bar to the "Sound And Audio Devices" of the Control Panel,very helpful.
But may be I should also mention it was a pain in the a to get both cards working properly,but mostly because they were both Creative cards and used the identically named,but different,files in their drivers.Wich is not the case with two cards I'm running right now : x-fi for everything and some hell-knows-what from Realtec just for microphone input,since the genius of Creative people putting mic in and digital out on the same jack prevents me from using the VDA-1 dac and the microphone through the same card.Both these cards work fine and installed without issues.
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post #12 of 12
3/28/11 at 8:32am

sorry, for bumping this old thread,

I'm going to try my 1212M in the same pc with Auzentech Prelude, but since they share Creative drivers, I'm affraid it could be problems,

Has anyone experienced the Emu with an xFi card in windows 7x64 environment?

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