[lini]

Just for your info, there's a new external sound module from Terratec coming up - the Phase 26 USB which is part of Terratec's "Producer" series. List price over here is 299 Euro, which seems a bit hefty for a usb solution - but the feature list might make up for that: 24bit/96kHz ad/da, midi in/out (back), toslink and cinch digital i/o (front), 2x stereo cinch line in (1x front, 1x back), 1x stereo cinch line out (front), 6ch cinch out (back), 1/4" headphone out (with level control and 36 mW, front), 1/4" mono mic in (with level control, front), cinch phono in (with pre-amplification, front) - I think, that was it... No, wait, the USB 1.1 port (back), the jack for an external power supply (back) as well as the metal case might also be worth mentioning. Pics can be found over there: http://productsde.terratec.net/index...gall&gid=73&p=

I don't know yet, what soundchip(s) it's based on and whether it's a non-resampling solution for 16bit/44.1khz redbook/wav playback, but I'm going to order a test sample soon, anyway...

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

 

[apropos]

lini,

Did you get a chance to test it out?

 

[lini]

Sorry, but unfortunately I wasn't able to. Reason being that I've quit my editor job in Munich shortly after, and when I started my new editor job over here at c't, a usb sound module review had just been performed and published which included the Phase 26 USB...

In addition, Terratec has already annouced a more interesting module, the Aureon 7.1 FireWire, which I got ~ 10 days ago. So far, it looks very promising: It's a non-resampling firewire sound module with toslink in/out, phono in (in hardware! internal inspection showed me two lm833 opamps and plastic caps in the according section, which should give fair results...), line in, mic in (seems to use tl072...) with level control, headphone out (also TL072, driving a pair of transistors per channel...) with volume control, 7.1 out (with 4580 opamps here...), stepped digital master control, Wolfson WM8770 codec and a BridgeCo DM1000 multimedia processor (nifty thingy - includes a 100 MHz ARM9 core...). Listening tests will follow, as well as some measurements (with Rohde&Schwarz UPL) later on (courtesy of c't)...

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini

 

[apropos]

lini,

Do you have a link to that review of Phase 26 USB?

Do you know if Aureon 7.1 Firewire is available (or will be available in the near future) in the US? I tried searching for it on google but I only found German sites that were selling it.