Hello folks,

I am thinking about buying a new soundcard, 95% music listening (stereo), 5% home cinema (dolby digital throughput via spdif). As my primary focus is music and the quality of the analog output is my main concern, I am thinking about the following two options:

M-Audio: Audiophile 2496 OR Revolution 5.1.

The former is a previous generation pro card, the latter though being a consumer product, sports the newer DACs. I read through many reviews and comparisons, but none of them could answer my question: Which of the two has the better analog stereo output quality? The older pro card or the newer consumer card?

I cannot use more expensive / better hardware like the Emu 0404 or the Audiophile 192 because these cards are not supported by linux and/or ALSA, which is my operating system of choice.

Thanks in advance for your advice!

tale

chances of someone have drivers for an emu card is pretty high in linux.

I have just searched the alsa mailing lists (user and development) and there are currently no drivers for the emu0404/1212 cards available. There are development efforts to reverse-engineer a driver for the emu1212, but no results are available yet. To make it worse, the statement of the developer didn't sound like there would be a working version soon...

I'd put my money on the older Pro ... additionally, the M-Audio Delta AP 24/96 can be connected through 'real' cinch cables instead of crappy mini-jacks.

Have a 24/96. Analog cable connections (we call them RCA where I live) are nice for stereo components. Darn good soundcard.

I can confirm that Audiophile 2496 does work with Linux. My media PC is Windows (only Windows PC I have), but sometimes I boot with Knoppix to back up the drive and it does recognize and use (ie emanates some some Knoppix sounds during boot up) I only use the digital output so I cannot comment on audio part. Stull I thought I should chime in to confirm that it is indeed Linux friendly.

Triza

For linux there are 2 choices I would consider. If money is now object try the RME card. This is a great card but it costs a bundle
http://www.rme-audio.com/english/digi96/digi96pa.htm

But I will tell you it is hard to beat the Chaintech AV710. You can get this card for about 30 bucks. It uses a pretty good wolfson dac and is supported by alsa. I like this card because it does not resample at all.

Hey!

Thanks your suggestions and tips. Money is object, and 299 Euros are definitively too much At least at the moment. Is the Chaintech Card very new or older? I cannot find a store in Germany which has it in stock.

This really drives me mad. On a german hifi board the newer revolution was recommended to me, because of their newer and better DACs... I'll probably just ask the support team of M-Audio, they are said to be very helpful.

tale

The problem lies with E-MU. I have a 0404 and I would *really* like to have Linux drivers. Right now, I'm using a Soundblaster Live! (my secondary MIDI device ) for sounds in Linux.

A couple of times, the ALSA developers requested some data from E-MU to develop drivers, like they always do with sound card manufactures, but E-MU doesn't respond

I really think they're losing customers here.

Hi,

I just received an answer from the M-Audio support team. They said, that the Revolution is the technically better card, in all aspects, but the superiority is only audible when using audio material with high resolution. For normal CD quality there seem to be no difference in quality for these both cards.

On the german board the ESI Juli@ was recommended to me, also a great sound card, but this time I seem to be lucky. The Juli@ is supported by ALSA, at the moment not fully but its basics work. Anybody owns the Juli@ and/or has got it working with Linux/ALSA?

tale