14 Jan
2015
14 Jan
'15
4:27 p.m.
Hi,
in a recent thread (*) I've finally discovered that my beloved Terratec DMX 6Fire is
an old school audio
interface so I wonder if switching to a more recent one would result in performance gain
or not in the same situation.
/raffaele
(*) http://lists.linuxaudio.org/pipermail/linux-audio-user/2015-January/100436.…
--
« Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus »
14 Jan
14 Jan
4:33 p.m.
On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 3:25 PM, Raffaele Morelli <
raffaele.morelli(a)gmail.com> wrote:
would result in performance gain or not in the same situation.
What do you mean by "performance gain"? Save a few CPU cycles on ALSA dmix?
I advise not fixing this if they're not broken :)
Cheers, -Harry
--
http://www.openavproductions.com
4:55 p.m.
On 14/01/15 at 03:33pm, Harry van Haaren wrote:
On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 3:25 PM, Raffaele Morelli
<
raffaele.morelli(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Let's say I will follow your advice if performance gain is limited to few cycles, I
love
my old cling-clang box ;-)
Really, just curious, it just works like a charm even on this old CPU
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5200+
cache size : 512 KB
--
« Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus »
would result in performance gain or not in the same situation.
What do you mean by "performance gain"? Save a few CPU cycles on ALSA dmix?
I advise not fixing this if they're not broken :) 
15 Jan
15 Jan
2:39 a.m.
On Wed, 14 Jan 2015, Raffaele Morelli wrote:
in a recent thread (*) I've finally discovered
that my beloved Terratec DMX 6Fire is an old school audio
interface so I wonder if switching to a more recent one would result in performance gain
or not in the same situation.
I would suggest that if your current card has a bit depth/sample rate that
works for you and is a PCI card.... it probably performs better than a new
USB Audio IF. Really the only reason to change your audio card is if you
need more i/o or bit depth. There is really very little new in audio IF
besides the port type (the method of connecting to the computer) and so
long as you have a computer with the port you need, just about anything is
better than USB. I say USB because that is what all the "cheap"
(affordable) audio interfaces are these days. The firewire boxes are
mostly based on old chipsets, so new gets you new caps/diodes/etc. but not
anything new.
So, if your box is showing it's age because the caps are baked or
whatever, then it may be time to buy or repair. Although it is more
costly, I prefer separate mic preamps with line inputs. It means I can
match pre to mic. I think that the mic pre that comes with most audio
boxes is better than it once was, but a cheap pre is a cheap pre and for
$500 with 8 pre and ADC/DAC they are cheap.
On the other hand, if you want to upgrade, don't ask us :) I think best
system use is still PCI or PCIe, firewire is still next with USB last
place. (Intel HDA does not get honourable mention... they are ok for
playback, but not recording)
Aside from bitdepth, my old 16 bit ensoniq seems to have fewer problems
than the USB boxes I have tried. My semipro interface is ice1712 based.
When I bought a new mother board, I got one with 3 PCI slots so I could
keep using it and have a choice of IRQs.
--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net
8:10 a.m.
On 14/01/15 at 05:32pm, Len Ovens wrote:
On Wed, 14 Jan 2015, Raffaele Morelli wrote:
Old school was referred to the dmix stuff, so the double quotes in "aged".
My question explained was: did I miss something in audio hw interfaces which is worth an
hw upgrade?
Just for the record, I was planning to buy an EWS 88MT, my first audio card beck in 2005
when ardour was 0.97, kernel 2.4 and debian sarge...
--
«My mama said
to get things done
You'd better not mess
with Major Tom»
D.Bowie
in a recent thread (*) I've finally discovered
that my beloved Terratec DMX 6Fire is an old school audio
interface so I wonder if switching to a more recent one would result in performance gain
or not in the same situation.
I would suggest that if your current card has a bit depth/sample rate that
works for you and is a PCI card.... it probably performs better than a new
USB Audio IF. Really the only reason to change your audio card is if you
need more i/o or bit depth. There is really very little new in audio IF
besides the port type (the method of connecting to the computer) and so long
as you have a computer with the port you need, just about anything is better
than USB. I say USB because that is what all the "cheap" (affordable) audio
interfaces are these days. The firewire boxes are mostly based on old
chipsets, so new gets you new caps/diodes/etc. but not anything new.
So, if your box is showing it's age because the caps are baked or whatever,
then it may be time to buy or repair. Although it is more costly, I prefer
separate mic preamps with line inputs. It means I can match pre to mic. I
think that the mic pre that comes with most audio boxes is better than it
once was, but a cheap pre is a cheap pre and for $500 with 8 pre and ADC/DAC
they are cheap.
On the other hand, if you want to upgrade, don't ask us :) I think best
system use is still PCI or PCIe, firewire is still next with USB last place.
(Intel HDA does not get honourable mention... they are ok for playback, but
not recording)
Aside from bitdepth, my old 16 bit ensoniq seems to have fewer problems than
the USB boxes I have tried. My semipro interface is ice1712 based. When I
bought a new mother board, I got one with 3 PCI slots so I could keep using
it and have a choice of IRQs.
3:09 p.m.
On Thu, 15 Jan 2015, Raffaele Morelli wrote:
Old school was referred to the dmix stuff, so the
double quotes in "aged".
My question explained was: did I miss something in audio hw interfaces which is worth an
hw upgrade?
Just for the record, I was planning to buy an EWS 88MT, my first audio card beck in 2005
when ardour was 0.97, kernel 2.4 and debian sarge...
The old school was talking about the PCI cards that came with about 5
inputs for cd and software and (I can't remember what they were all for)
and had a hardware mixer as part of the card. The newer cards expect the
OS to do that, so the older cards would use less cpu cycles... except even
with an older card the OS will still do the mixing in a newer OS. But the
movement of audio from sw to hw is about the same one way or the other.
USB is only bad because of implementation. It takes some work on most
computers to find a clean (unshared) USB port.
--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net
3629
days inactive
3630
days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
5 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
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Harry van Haaren -
Len Ovens -
Raffaele Morelli