After reading almost every relevent post on this and other forums I have decided to buy an Audiophile USB. The SB PCI64 I have suffers from interference and 3.5mm jacks are getting dodgy. Also some times there is a slightly audible 'crackle' noise. Still it is a really good sounding card to my ears (and i have a decent setup too).

Reasons for wanting to buy the Audiophile USB:

- USB cable so i can put it close to my amp
- Apparently good sound quality
- RCA jacks (i hate 3.5mm ones)
- midi for my homemade drum machine

Any comments?
Ross

You might want to consider upgrading the power supply with the Audiophile USB (if you get it) to something linear regulated -- one other person I know of has done this and claimed a difference, although I can't confirm it with my own experience (except to say that I'm realizing more and more the benefits of clean power when it comes to audio -- at least in the area of better measurements).

Edit -- also, good idea in general to use it with a separate PCI USB card rather than motherboard based USB. That will add to the cost, but you avoid a whole host of potential issues.

What's the difference in this case? Isn't it better to take USB off the PCI bus?

OT!

Anyone have a link to the best or newest Win98- and WinXP-drivers for SBPCI64?

In the event that I may be Fewtch's "other person" I'll confirm it. Replacing the stock PS with a Stancor STA-5790 had a surprisingly large impact. One of the nice things about the AP USB is its headphone jack and swapping the PS brought that close to having a separate headphone amp in overall sound quality. It's definitely the biggest change with a mod I've ever experienced. The tips are different sizes though you either need to cut and swap them or visit your local Radio Shack and well still get out the knife.

My experience has been that motherboard based PCI is often buggy and weird... for example, I used to have a USB ethernet "card" connected to my MB USB, and whenever I accessed the Net heard a crackling sound through my soundcard. It may have been an OS/driver related issue though.

P.S. Blessingx, you were indeed the one .

Well, I DO have a USB 2.0 card simply because my motherboard didn't come with built-in USB. I suffer similar crackling problems, but only a) when music/audio is playing, and B) only when there is some decent CPU usage. My 'soundcard' is a stereo-link. As far as I can tell, there is no way to eliminate this problem. So I'll just wait until I can afford a new card, which is near the bottom on the list of things I need to replace on my computer.

Maybe it's related to bugs in the USB spec itself... a lot of people seem to feel USB is crap and IEEE-1394 a lot better. I'm a bit surprised that it happens with a PCI USB card though, since I'd think the OS would be feeding data to the PCI card (like any other card that takes data), and the card handling the USB-specific stuff. But I guess it would be similar with motherboard USB, so who knows...

I'm an electronics engineer so it won't be a problem doing the upgrade

I'm one of those people.

Unfortunately, I haven't seen a firewire sound card yet that is even remotely affordable.

I've recently bought an Audiophile USB and I've been very pleased with the sound quality. It's output is going into a reasonably good Naim amp and Epos speakers, it doesn't disgrace itself at all being used with good quality hi-fi gear.

I'll have to investigate power supplies, sounds like a good mod. Not sure how easy it is to get a Stancor ps in the UK though.

fewtch,
If you goto your device manager and sort devices by connection, 9 outta 10 times teh onboard usb is connected to the PCI bus.

Hi all,
I'm interrested in the audiophile USB to work with cubase on my laptop (by connecting a midi keyboard). Is the midi quality of the audiophile usb ok ? Is there a kind of "expander" in this usb card with midi soundbanks ... ?
thank you.

I bought one last month (for 230 €). I plugged my Sennheiser HD565 and went "WOW!"

I haven't noticed crackling problems, even when surfing, ripping and encoding at the same time. I'm using the USB port on an Ideq 200T SFF. I change my hardware pretty often, but I think I'll keep this one a long time.

Tip :
If you get an error message like this: "Bad Directsound Driver. Please install proper drivers or select etc."... that just means you forgot to power on your card. I felt pretty silly the first time, when I thought I had to reinstall my drivers.

hehe you felt silly, i finally got the thing today (order from america):

Tip:

If there is no sound from the outputs, do not reinstall the drivers 10 times, scour device manager for conflicts and scream abuse... simply TURN UP THE F@#KING VOLUME.

lol i can laugh about it now but i wasn't happy for a while there....

http://www.m-audio.net/products/m-audio/fw410.php

I guess it's a bit pricey, but if you want the quality you must pay.

Sorry I can't directly comment on that (or any USB) sound card. But, something to investigate is some reports that with some USB soundcards, you end up with a higher latency than a regular card. It seems the USB interface can add time to the process, where a PCI card can have much less.

This is a issue for people using sound studios and such like Cubase, and playing live into it with keyboards and so forth. But a critical one, since if you have too much latency (basically the time between pressing the key, and hearing the music) you can't play live with the recorded instruments.

Anyway, I have no idea how good/bad it might be, just have heard stories. I'd suggest going to Steinberg's discussion groups and ask around.. as well as ask their tech support. Possibly Computer Music's forums as well.

Might save you buying one to find out it won't work for ya.. or clear the way to a happy purchace..

On the midi "quality", I don't know if the audiophile has a internal synth or player of any sort (the Audiophile 2496 has none, I think) like the Soundblaster cards have had. You'd be playing some software or hardware instument or sampler instead, which would be responsible for the sound. Probably there's a midi in and out to chain controllers and boxes and stuff.

Hope it helps