[Jasper994]

OMG!!! this thing sounds SSSSOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! good!

I just got mine at Guitar Center for $165!

I'm using balanced cables with my PreSonus HP4 and it sounds simply amazing!

 

[lan]

How'd you get it at that price?

It's much better than AP USB eh?

 

[ooheadsoo]

That wouldn't be Torrance...like torrance near LA? O_O Man I'm almost going to grab one of these! This just isn't fair! I've gotta convince myself to at least wait for the meet! Except I won't be able to hear irondreamer's on my speakers, so I guess it doesn't even matter that much...Maybe I will just go grab one...

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

WEll mine is all modded out now, and steadily improving with burn-in time, turning into quite a beast. I don't doubt that it sounds quite different then the stock model. Perhaps having some time to get used to the stock sound before the meet would help you appreciate the modded sound that much more?

 

[Ph34rful]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cadobhuk Why cant u hook all the harddrives up the ordinary way?

I can but I do not have enough hookups. Using regular IDE I can only hook up 4 drives total.
I currently have 6 hard drives. 1 Cd burner. And 1 Dvd burner. So there is no way for me to use them all using only the regular IDE ports.

 

[lan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ph34rful I currently have 6 hard drives. 1 Cd burner. And 1 Dvd burner. So there is no way for me to use them all using only the regular IDE ports.

An IDE nightmare. How about moving some to external firewire enclosure? Why that many harddrives? Can't get a larger drive and use less of them?

I like the chipsets which have the I/O connected directly to the chipset and bypassing the PCI bus. There's less contention that way. The PCI bus is pretty heavy with traffic especially during some disk operations.

 

[Ph34rful]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lan An IDE nightmare. How about moving some to external firewire enclosure? Why that many harddrives? Can't get a larger drive and use less of them? I like the chipsets which have the I/O connected directly to the chipset and bypassing the PCI bus. There's less contention that way. The PCI bus is pretty heavy with traffic especially during some disk operations.

Heh ya it's pretty messy but it works. Well until now anyway. I was thinking about picking up some USB2 enclosures. But I really like having everything inside. And not having to worry about external power.

I have 2 x 80gb, 2 x 200gb, and 2 x 250gb. And the bad news is I need more space. I'll probably be getting rid of the 2 x 80gb soon and upgrading them to 2 x 250gb. What chipsets have this direct connection you mention?

 

[lan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ph34rful I was thinking about picking up some USB2 enclosures. But I really like having everything inside. And not having to worry about external power. What chipsets have this direct connection you mention?

Well consider less drives is also less noisy electrically and is probably more stable for your power. That may affect the soundcards quality.

I long gave up having that many drives inside a computer. Instead I have external firewire devices and networked storage. Local harddrive space only makes sense if you really need the speed.

I think all modern chipset have IDE directly connected to the controller. I'm not exactly sure because I don't use AMD systems (nvidia, via, etc.)

 

[Jasper994]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ooheadsoo That wouldn't be Torrance...like torrance near LA? O_O Man I'm almost going to grab one of these! This just isn't fair! I've gotta convince myself to at least wait for the meet! Except I won't be able to hear irondreamer's on my speakers, so I guess it doesn't even matter that much...Maybe I will just go grab one...

The very same...

I believe it's the Lawndale Guitar Center though... it's on Artesia just off Hawthorne across from the Galleria. Ask for Chris or Kevin, they're both really cool. I dealt with Chris this time, he really hooked me up.

 

[Jasper994]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lan How'd you get it at that price? It's much better than AP USB eh?

hehehe yeah, just a little... as in my face resembled this smiley --->

 

[Edwood]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jasper994 hehehe yeah, just a little... as in my face resembled this smiley --->

Did going with balanced help with the ground loop?

Since Jasper994 got it to work with them entering the price into the computer, I'd assume all of the Guitar Centers could sell it for that price.
Ask for $160, they'll say they can't do it for that price. Then tell them "how about $165." It should work with their system.

Now how low are they willing to go with the 1820M?

-Ed

 

[Jasper994]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Edwood Did going with balanced help with the ground loop? Since Jasper994 got it to work with them entering the price into the computer, I'd assume all of the Guitar Centers could sell it for that price. Ask for $160, they'll say they can't do it for that price. Then tell them "how about $165." It should work with their system. Now how low are they willing to go with the 1820M? -Ed

I'm not sure entirely... I only have the 1212m hooked to the amp and don't have a ground loop

but there's no way I can test it with the other stuff since they are unbalanced. I'm happy though, like we talked about it's easy enough to swap 1/4" cables when I want to watch tv and use the DVD-A player...

Now I'm seriously thinking about getting another hard drive and copying all my DVD-A's to disk...

 

[Jasper994]

Edwood,

BTW, this thing is bassy as hell compared to my Audiophile...

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jasper994 Edwood, BTW, this thing is bassy as hell compared to my Audiophile...

Just wait 'till you hear the modded one, it has SLAM like I've never heard before, truly eyeblinking!

 

[halcyon]

You have a classic case of PCI latency / bus utilisation issues with Creative (all of them) cards.

They are very prominent on Via chipsets, but sometimes also rear their ugly head on Intel/nvidia/AMD chipsets.

The issue is, as described, PCI bus control devices battling for long enough time to lock the bus transfers.

You can remedy this, as Iron dreamer explained, by raising your sound card PCI latency and lowering that of your RAID's. You'll loose some of the throughput on that RAID card.

Any PCI card will be the same, if it uses the same chipset. Better cards can co-exists without problems on the PCI bus, without completely hogging it or being starved when others behave not so nicely.

You can also try raising the internal buffer of your sound card. This could alleviate things a bit as well (I'm not sure EMU has one, but I use one on my RME).

There are also motherboards that have a dedicated higher PCI latency PCI slot in them, meant for audio cards. Some people have found that these work also nicely, without having to fiddle with PowerStrip.

This is also the reason why I like my RME card: no clicks, pops - ever on any of my chipsets/motherboards, regardless of how many IDEs I've run (8 devices maximum).

regards,
halcyon