ok I will chime in I guess...

for your/any mic Centrance makes a clean mic interface called Mic Mate Pro.  I love mine, its quiet, has decent pre amp, runs 24 bit and will run with Indamixx at 2msecs in Jack.

I am pretty sure Robin Gareus wrote in another respone about 'on soundcard' buiilt in processing with UA EX 25/ others and basically said all that stuff does not add up to a hill of beans.....

As far as pre amps in low cost mass market audio devices such as M Audio and Presonus that's all definitely a marketing scam
because when we were making Trinity DAW with Echo Audio I got to look at every mfg. design and exactly what they ALL put in these devices and in EVERY bill of materials BOM as a mfg you have 2 choices when building a sound card.
1) The .80 cent part from Maxim or some of the others
2) The high end uber boutique part that will cost you some serious coin

What I learned from Milo at Echo is all of these products have noise but Milo is very good at  placing other parts on the circuit to cancel and kill noise.  Just ask Daniel James at 64stduio because he has one of the original Trinity DAW units and its so super quiet ( you think its not running)

Again I would suggest going with UA EX 25 because I think I read in LAU that you can get 24bit mode going on the card.

Sorry to break anyone's heart with the 80 cent part fact but that's the tale of the tape.

However, now that I know where the difference is measured between audio cards, I would choose Echo because Milo is at the top of his game, AND Echo has been Linux friendly for quite some time.

Thank you

Ron
Indamixx


On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 3:29 AM, Ng Oon-Ee <ngoonee@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, 2009-11-26 at 12:19 +0100, fons@kokkinizita.net wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 07:00:27PM +0800, Ng Oon-Ee wrote:
>
> > Hi fons, you're 'fons' in jack-devel, aren't you? Thanks =)
>
> AFAIK there's only one fons in jack-devel, and that is
> indeed this one :-)
>
> > I gather, then, that I should be seeking information comparing the ADCs
> > of the cards I listed, probably from side-by-side reviews. Prices are
> > competitive with each other (from 139 USD to 190 USD) and within my
> > budget, barely. Thanks for the help, again.
>
> For noise levels when using the mic inputs the AD converters
> won't matter much, the preamp dominates the performance (unless
> it's a very bad one). The converters could have an effect on
> sound quality, but most types used today are quite good.
>
> I guess that the measured performance of my UA-5 is quite
> typical for this range of products. If any one would be
> really much better, the manufacturer would boast about
> it and provide an EIN figure.
>
> Ciao,

Ah, so talking about boasting about it, Presonus has an Audiobox USB
unit which boasts (to quote their website) "preamps that out perform any
USB-based interface hands down." None of the other manufacturers, as far
as I could see, even mentioned pre-amps except to say "yes, we have
them".

Is this just hubris? Does Presonus really have a good name for quality
pre-amps at 'all budget levels'? Should I be worried that this device
doesn't seem mentioned in the alsa wiki at all?

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