[RAI]

Man, I've been reading this Forum for several days, and my head is spinning.!
Foobar, ASIO, 192k, 24 bit, etc!???? I'm looking to add a good sound card so that I can listen to music on my headphones (a Grado 225, running through a Gilmore Lite Head Amp), and so that I can play tunes on my desktop sound system. I use iTunes to import music from CDs to my computer (192 AAC), and to play back music on my desktop. I want GREAT sound, but all I need is stereo- not gaming or 5.1 or 7.1 sounds. I don't do any recording at all. I want to continue using iTunes for ripping, burning and playback. I don't want to get bogged down in ultra complexity, but I want the best sound I can reasonably get my hands on. The general consensus on this Board seems to favor the E-MU 1212 and 0404, and so I'm thinking of these cards. I'm also thinking about the M-Audio Audiophile card. Will these cards make a big difference in my system using iTunes (I'm running a SB Audigy now, which I think sounds pretty bad)? Does anyone have a suggestion as to what would best suit my needs? Thanks!

 

[proxops-pete]

You can't beat Chaintech AV-710 for ~$25 at Newegg.com!! Go get it now!!!

PS. oh, and when you get it, look up Mr. Radar's setup guide (in his sig).

 

[Mr.Radar]

Yes. For iTunes you can just ignore the Foobar2000 setup section unless you feel like giving it a try. Or, you might want to get the EMU 0404 over the AV-710 with your Gilmore Lite + SR-225 setup as you will almost definately be able to appriciate the improvement in sound quality over it (the AV-710 is considered an entry level card for setups with SR-60's, HD-497's, PortaPros and such, or people who want to try computer audio). Though the EMU 0404's driver can be very confusing, especially if all you want to do is listen to music.

 

[davvy]

Quote:

Man, I've been reading this Forum for several days, and my head is spinning.!

I can fully understand where you are coming from. You have got to understand that the people on this forum are VERY heavily into audio and often actually enjoy spending a lot of time tweaking their system.

The good news is that you can run the EMU cards without all that messing around and they still sound great. I have the EMU 1212m. I don't bother with resampling as I don't hear any significant benefits on my system (EMU->PPA->HD650s). I use ASIO simply because it is easy to do - to be honest I am not certain that I can hear much difference over Directsound. If you just want to use the EMU with iTunes you won't have to change any settings, just start Patchmix and run iTunes and you should be good to go. I would definitely go with one of the EMU cards if I was you - great sound quality for the price and they don't have to be complicated if you don't want them to.

The only other pieces of advice I would offer are to consider using a different program to iTunes and consider ripping to FLAC. The thing is that you are likely to get more into this as a hobby. And the last thing you want to have to do is to re-rip all of your music like I have ended up doing. You might think that AAC is good enough for now, but what if you get a portable player in the future that doesn't support it ? Or what if you decide in the future that you actually can hear a difference and want higher SQ ? If you rip to FLAC, you will definitely never have to re-rip, and you can transcode to any format you might want in the future. The best program to use for ripping is EAC (just do a search and you will find heaps of info about it). There is a good guide at HTML Code:

[left]http://www.chrismyden.com/nuke/modules.php?op=modload&name=Elite_DAE&file=index[/left]

Also for a player to use instead of iTunes, check out the latest version of Winamp (keeps most of the ease-of-use of iTunes while offering heaps more features and flexibility)

 

[iamdone]

Yeah, I have the emu 1212 and I just use iTunes. I have everything ripped in Apple lossless, so I can't use the other players anyway. I think it sounds excellent and there's nothing to tweak. The one option was to go into Quicktime from the control panel, goto Sound and change the Directsound to WAV to prefered device.

 

[Zurg]

I recommend the M-Audio Transit. Since it is a USB device, it is trivial to hook up and for the price, it produces very nice sound. Very low hassle, very good sound, modest price.

$68 at Florida Music Company

-Z

 

[Jasper994]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr.Radar Though the EMU 0404's driver can be very confusing, especially if all you want to do is listen to music.

Yes and no, all he would have to do is get somebody to walk him through it once and then he could just leave it. If he's only ever doing one thing, he'd never have to look at patchmix again. If he has it configured for 44.1khz, it'll even playback all the system sounds.

 

[lan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jasper994 Yes and no, all he would have to do is get somebody to walk him through it once and then he could just leave it.

Or just send him the session file.

 

[RAI]

Thanks guys! I really appreciate your input. I feel a lot better now about taking on a high-end card like the 0404 or the 1212. I think that's what I'm going to do. Are the 1212 and the 0404 about the same complexity as far as interface is concerned? If the 0404 is not much simpler, I lean towards the 1212. One final question- davvy mentioned that I can start Patchmix and run iTunes. Does this mean that I'll have to start Patchmix first every time I want to run iTunes, or just for the inital setup? If I do have to start Patchmix every time I run iTunes, does this mean that I'll have to start Patchmix every time I run anything on the computer with sound on it (even websites and email attachments)? I look forward to learning more about the world of high-end computer audio. I generally really like getting into this kind of thing, but in this case it seemed so overwhelming that I almost just gave up. Thanks for "talking me down".

Cheers,
Bob

 

[Mr.Radar]

I don't own an EMU card but I think you only need to start PatchMix whenever you want to change a setting on the card (like signal routing and sample rates and other stuff you don't need to worry too much about once it's working).

Quote:

Are the 1212 and the 0404 about the same complexity as far as interface is concerned?

Yes. The 0404 and 1212m use the same driver.

 

[iamdone]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RAI Thanks guys! I really appreciate your input. I feel a lot better now about taking on a high-end card like the 0404 or the 1212. I think that's what I'm going to do. Are the 1212 and the 0404 about the same complexity as far as interface is concerned? If the 0404 is not much simpler, I lean towards the 1212. One final question- davvy mentioned that I can start Patchmix and run iTunes. Does this mean that I'll have to start Patchmix first every time I want to run iTunes, or just for the inital setup? If I do have to start Patchmix every time I run iTunes, does this mean that I'll have to start Patchmix every time I run anything on the computer with sound on it (even websites and email attachments)? I look forward to learning more about the world of high-end computer audio. I generally really like getting into this kind of thing, but in this case it seemed so overwhelming that I almost just gave up. Thanks for "talking me down". Cheers, Bob

The session loads up automatically when you start the computer. In the default mode, iTunes works perfectly. There's nothing to do. I think it gets complicated when using Foobar or Winamp and start changing the settings.

 

[Jasper994]

Patchmix loads itself into your start up config so it's always running. You'll have to open it out of your system tray if you ever want to configure it to run in a configuration other than its default config. Once you configure it the way you want it'll stay that way unless you change it again. In default config it will playback anything you throw at it as long as it's 48khz or 44.1khz. It's only when you start tweaking it that it becomes more challenging to deal with. In truth though, there are plenty of people that have sessions for everything you could think of so if you got them to e-mail them to you it's really only a matter of opening patchmix out of the system tray, clicking on the load session icon and then selecting the session you want to use.

 

[RAI]

Excellent. E-Mu 1212, here I come!

 

[RAI]

Quote:

Originally Posted by davvy I can fully understand where you are coming from. You have got to understand that the people on this forum are VERY heavily into audio and often actually enjoy spending a lot of time tweaking their system. The only other pieces of advice I would offer are to consider using a different program to iTunes and consider ripping to FLAC. The thing is that you are likely to get more into this as a hobby. And the last thing you want to have to do is to re-rip all of your music like I have ended up doing. You might think that AAC is good enough for now, but what if you get a portable player in the future that doesn't support it ? Or what if you decide in the future that you actually can hear a difference and want higher SQ ? If you rip to FLAC, you will definitely never have to re-rip, and you can transcode to any format you might want in the future. The best program to use for ripping is EAC (just do a search and you will find heaps of info about it). There is a good guide at HTML Code: [left]http://www.chrismyden.com/nuke/modules.php?op=modload&name=Elite_DAE&file=index[/left] Also for a player to use instead of iTunes, check out the latest version of Winamp (keeps most of the ease-of-use of iTunes while offering heaps more features and flexibility)

How can I rip using a lossless codec like FLAC or Apple Lossless, and then burn CDs using AAC or MP3? How about using iTunes- it doesn't seem to let you burn with a different codec than you ripped to, and it doesn't seem to let you transfer music to you iPod using a different codec than you ripped with.

Thanks,
Bob

 

[Solude]

iTunes supports Apple Lossless doesn't it? Anyway do get the 1212M over the 0404. Your setup is already pretty forward, teh 0404 might push it into harsh while the 1212M will feed you smooth refined sound while still very dynamic. Don't worry about Foobar and such, I use WMP9 and the 1212M on the default 'Minimum -10' setting and it awesome. I played with Foobar for a while but I still prefer WMP for management and both sound the same to me at 16/44. 24/192 ate up the WAVE channel in windows and lots of CPU time. It sounded slightly better but only when listening critically.