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In the Forum: Off Air Audio
In the Thread: How to record FM broadcasts.
Post Subject: Re: Digital: small steps and further update…Posted by TonyB on: 11/8/2005
Hi Romy

 Romy the Cat wrote:

... I decided to listen my native feline instincts and go with them. So, decided to buy a Lavry’s Gold AD122. ....Now, the biggest problem remains what digital I/O PC interface to use after the Lavry’s digital stream. Lavry has the digital balanced outputs, so what along the good sound cards have AES inputs.  As I learned two cards re in running for being better and have the AES/EBU?

Will my cheap $100 card with XLR/RCA adaptor do the same if I load a digital stream directly to PC’s HD drive? Will the quality of the clock and thousands of other thing in those expansive cards still be matter? I do not know… Can I buy another not $700  care juts to have a AES/EBU I/O for my PC? If some one do then please advise me….

Still, I do not stop to consider to go for PCMCIA card with antennal box and run this entire thing from a laptop… Unfortunately no one who do the pro cards and whoever do impress me very little, not to mention that none of them do the AES/EBU. What I actual need would be the old RME Digi96 card, now discontinued, the card that had AES/EBU, no DSP on board, no mixing capacity, do analog section at all. It was $150 and had the rest within itself identical to what the today RME’s $700 card have.

Well, it will be fun to see what else is available there…. BTW, one more thing… if I go do 40”-50” of balanced d-cable than dose it quietly mater. Will the pro-shop level cable sufficient enough?



The advantage of using the balanced AES/EBU is the ability to have long cables. I would not worry much about input into PC AS LONG AS the data is stored onto a hard disk. Here, bits are bits and as long as they are all received correctly, all is OK. I think that it is the playback from PC to an external DAC which is more critical. If the PC is a master sending the data (and generating the clock), I would not use it. That is why I would go for one of the PRO (expensive, e.g. Lynx AES 16) cards which can accept master clock when sending data. Can your Bidat generate or accept master clock?

I have looked at USB interface for this application. I wanted to have asynchronous data transfer from PC to the DAC. Some people modify M Audio Transit but the Transit uses synchronous data from PC. I bought a Creative Audigy USB external interface. It is cheap, asynchronous, ... but it re-samples the data received from PC in its internal DSPs. So back it went. And getting ANY info from Creative took months and months.

Regards,

TonyB

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