[MrDetermination]

"What would you do with a million dollars?"

"Two cards at the same time man"

I'm a gamer and a music fan. I went from Senn 590s to HD600s a couple weeks ago. Already sold the 600s, as they raped my jawbone and the top of my head. Went to Grado 325s and run through a Headroom Little. I have mini-RCA and standard interconnects coming from Signal Cable.

I play Battlefield, UT2004, still CS sometimes and pretty much all the latest and greatest as they come out. But I also spend a lot of time foruming, reading, or just listening to music.

I have a Fortissimo III and have been drooling over the 1212m.

My questions:

1) If I ran both cards, would the 1212 not be trying to process the game sounds whenever I had a game up? Would this not slow down game performance?

2) Since the 1212m supports ASIO and the Fortissimo III does not, would I be able to use this Foobar plugin?

3) If the answers to both of those give me warm fuzzies the next question becomes how to get those signals to the headphone amp. There is background hiss in the FIII line out I'm trying to get rid of as part of this. I don't hear it when I have no significant volume out on the headphone out from the FIII. But as soon as I start playing music, its always there. So will this not be an issue if I basically had a custom cable made that spliced the mini output in to the standard interconnects between the 1212m and the Headroom Little (since the FIII won't be "getting" the music if I'm using ASIO)?

5) What the heck is ASIO?

5) Last question. What other questions should I be asking?

 

[cadobhuk]

1)In your windows control panel there's a button called sound and audio devices.Make a shortcut to it on your quicklaunch bar,and you'll be able to switch between two soundcards instantly any time.

In foobar,you need to go to output options and select the output method and the soundcard.But most applications use the one that's selected in sound and audio devices(including games).
2)You will,as long as you output to EMU

 

[Porksoda]

Once you have your multimedia/gaming card selected as your default, you can usually go into foobar or winamp or whatever and select your 1212m as the output device, but leave the fortissimo as default in windows. In the case of kernel streaming, the selection option is in the kernel streaming menu in setup. That's what I do anyway. That way, windows noise and surround gaming sound automatically go through your fortissimo and only things you specifically tell to go thru the 1212m will do so.

This is also nice cuz you don't windows beeps and stuff interrupting your head-fi bliss

 

[Mr.Radar]

3) The EMU 1212m is about as black as today's soundcards get. There is no background hiss.

4) ASIO is an alternative audio output method with low latency and it will bypass the Windows Kmixer (which distorts audio) on cards that don't have drivers that do that already (most of the time). I believe the EMU's driver bypass Kmixer already.

 

[MrDetermination]

Thanks.

So do you guys use the same amp/cans on both cards? Do you splice, or switch inputs somehow?

 

[Edwood]

That's what I love about RME's drivers.

I have both an RME soundcard and Audigy 2 in the same system with no conflicts.

And I don't have .....<Pinky to corner of mouth>.......One Million Dollars.

-Ed

 

[lan]

I send the digital output of my RME to my emu. This way I don't really switch anything or use splitters.

 

[MrDetermination]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lan I send the digital output of my RME to my emu. This way I don't really switch anything or use splitters.

I'm sorry but that is Greek to me. RME? EMU?

This is what I get out of that:

I send the digital output of blah to blah.

 

[cadobhuk]

You said you were drooling over the 1212m yet you don't know what EMU is?Its the same thing - EMU 1212m.RME is another HQ soundcard - RME digi 96/8 PAD .

 

[lan]

RME and emu are brand names. I'm just saying I'm sending the digital output of one card to another.

 

[ooheadsoo]

lan, you're brilliant! I'm gonna buy some cables or adaptors and send my onboard sound over to my emu

More handy than flipping the switch on my preamp!

 

[cadobhuk]

Oh yeah,sorry,there are other cards from both brands.Though that doesnt make alot of difference here.

 

[lan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ooheadsoo I'm gonna buy some cables or adaptors and send my onboard sound over to my emu More handy than flipping the switch on my preamp!

Whatcha still using onboard for? I have disabled mine. No sense having 3 sound devices for me.

If you know how to use the emu PatchMixDSP, it's nice.

 

[MrDetermination]

Okay, so once the digital (game processed sound) signal comes in to the 1212 you're listening straight off the 1212? So it acts as a passthru on the, again, already processed left and right sound?

So the 1212 wont try to EAX/A3D process the game sound again and thus slow game performance?

 

[Mr.Radar]

That's right. The EMU will just be doing the playback of whatever coming in on the digital ins (if that's how you set it up in the Patchmix control or whatever the EMU uses), it won't do any additional processing of the audio signal.