[kal_el_3914]

looking very hard at the e-mu 0404, but kinda turned off by the only 2 channel thing. Is there a sound card that has sound quality as good as or at least comparable to the 0404, and 5.1? I also don't need inputs. All i need is an optical out and an analogue out

 

[sgrossklass]

While not quite in the same class DAC wise (AK4358 vs. AK4395), the Revo 5.1 might be an option. In fact it could well be the best-sounding card with 3.5mm output jacks (not that the WM8770 equipped usual suspects would be bad, but the AK4358 is pretty good and apparently performs better than spec).

 

[Soundstorm]

Audigy4 Pro has 4 CS4398(1212M's DAC) on it..... Although I wouldn't recommend any Creative branded soundcard.

 

[sgrossklass]

The A4Pro also uses 4558 opamps (FM tuners no longer used those since the mid '80s, and I doubt they were ever used in CD players), who knows how good the voltage buffering for those is (not a great strength of Creative cards up to the 2ZS at least), and I think it still resamples 44.1 kHz in rather mediocre quality... no thanks. A waste of good components unlike you're good in soldering (SMD included).

 

[Soundstorm]

Buying the M-Audio Revo 5.1 isn't a great idea either, the drivers have not been updated since last year.

Maybe ESI/Audiotrak will step up to the plate with a new soundcard with 4 AK4395 DACs for multichannel goodness.

 

[sgrossklass]

Oops! Indeed, the latest driver is still the original 1.0.0.0. Well, as long as it works properly...

Yup, an Envy24HT based card with 4 AK4395s plus a good output stage (and working AC3/DTS passthrough), now that would be something. I bet some pretty expensive DVD players would look rather dumb is comparison.
EDIT: Some decent ADC and A/D performance would be nice, too. (My Aureon 5.1 Sky does quite well in recording stuff.)

 

[Glassman]

ESI cheap out these days.. they somehow refuse to use top of the line parts for their products.. if Juli@ doesn't have ak4395, you won't see any multichannel card with such DACs thats for sure.. Juli@ is interesting, it use eight channel DAC and still is just a stereo card

re: Revo 5.1 drivers, they are merely modified Revo 7.1 drivers that undergone development, M-Audio positioned Revo 5.1 at the bottom of it's line so they most likely do not want to waste any time working on drivers for it

 

[sgrossklass]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glassman ESI cheap out these days.. they somehow refuse to use top of the line parts for their products..

The sonic result is important, not so much what's on the card. So if they decided to take a somewhat lesser DAC and improved the analog stages behind it instead, what's wrong with that approach? Besides, I read that the Juli@ is basically a WT 192X replacement, performing better in spite of the latter's higher-spec'd parts - apparently the AK4358 performs better in practice than on paper. (The results obtained by iXBT support this - getting -95 dB THD+N out of a complete card is rather impressive when the DAC is only spec'd at -94 dB.)

 

[Glassman]

of course ESI usually do a good job, they opted for multichannel DAC because they wanted to do that swapping thing, RCA outs and TRS outs both have their own dedicated circuitry using different DACs, at least I believe so.. they might be using two in parallel to get better performance.. but as a replacement for ESI WT192X it fails, nothing compares to AK5394, period..