[LAD] [64studio-users] MIDI jitter

[Niels Mayer]

I don't know anything about the terratec as I bought my first (used)
card manufactured by them recently: they're almost mercedes-like in
their overengineering of things (super high quality circuit board and
engineering) and the documentation is always sparse... perhaps there's
a hidden jumper that sets the mode of the header socket?? Just like my
DMX6Fire has a "digital xtension" socket into which you can plugin a
waldorf microwave synth module and i'd love to find out the i2s data
input and output pinouts so as to replace the analog frontend w/ a few
of these http://www.twistedpearaudio.com/digital/wm8804.aspx and gain
extra digital ins/outs in place of not-so-great-sounding analog
front-end (alas using essentially the same components as on the ewx
24/96 on the dmx6fire 24/96, essentially terratec's version of
m-audio's 24/96 and Delta-66). But the built-in, software controlled
switch (envy24control) between TTL-spdif, optical-spdif and coax-spdif
all but makes up for the analog front end... as do the two full-speed
midi ports, one driving my db50xg clone.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr01/articles/soundcard.asp
## On the circuit board itself is a 16-pin header socket, which connects to a
## supplied cable terminating in a dummy backplate and 15-way D-type connector.
## Into this you can either plug a standard MIDI soundcard adaptor
cable, or a proprietary
## Terratec phono preamp to help transfer vinyl to CD, both of which
are optional extras.

> ASUS M2A-VM HDMI... Mounting an additional sound card won't cause an issue because of an
> additional interrupt?

It shouldn't, or at least it hasn't for me using similar hardware
(M2N-68VM for example).

> There will be no issues, e.g. for JACK, if I would use the Terratec EWX
> 24/96 for audio and another sound card for MIDI?

Just be sure you like the sound of the terratec's weak-sounding bass
assuming it sounds similar to the dmx6fire's using the same parts and
probably design (which could imho easily be modded back to decency,
see sound files for comparison at end of
.http://linuxaudio.org/mailarchive/lau/2010/6/28/170833 )

The other card's MIDI devices should just appear as a separate ALSA
MIDI device. ALSA midi will function independent of whether jack is
running or not, and independent of which soundcard is used for
jack-audio. If you need to have jack-audio work across two cards,
that's another matter entirely: they'd best be the same kind of card,
and have their SPDIF used-up for syncing between them. And I'm
ignoring jack-midi entirely , as I don't use it that much; qjackctl's
patchbay integration of ALSA midi devices makes jack midi a bit
superfluous for my uses.

Niels
http://nielsmayer.com