I am looking for a PCI soundcard which will give me a bit perfect (or at least very close) signal with very low jitter. I dont want one that resamples like the creative cards (44-48-44), well mainitaned drivers, bypasses kmixer and all that good stuff, preferably 2 optical outs but one is fine.

So far i have only been recommended the Juli@, are there any other suggestions?

Good deals are currently available on the Emu 0404

I just don't get it. People here complaining about resampling etc. You should blame crappy CDs for any quality lost not sound cards. These latest sound cards are several generations ahead of what audio CD can actually offer. It is mainly the 16-bit resolution that in my opinion is limiting today as it is not able to store enough information, not that 44 kHz / 48 kHz etc bullshit. Human ear is happy with 44/48 no matter what it cant hear that high anyway, but 16-bits are limiting. Thats it. All I know for sure that digital > analogue and that sound HW produced in 2006 >> sound HW produced in 1996.

maiki: what are you on about? he just asked for soundcard recommendations that do bit-perfect.

Not sure on the jitter but the Chaintech AV-710 could do bit-perfect and was very cheap (~$25) with 1 optical out I believe.

maiki: Some proof for 16-bit being limiting, please. That runs contrary to commonly accepted belief around here. Properly dithered 16-bit audio sources have SnRs of < -100dB. That happens to be lower than even modern hardware can accurately reproduce, BTW.

I think for the extra $25 its worth getting the Juli@ over the Emu 0404. I am hesitant at buying anything affiliated with Creative.
Is it hard to get bit perfect on the Chaintech AV-710, I've heard this name thrown around alot, but apparantly the drivers iffy and with ASIO4ALL you are not garunteed "bitperfect" especially with windows XP. Does anybody know what the drives for Juli@ are like?

The Emu cards are definitely superior. Creative did not create Emu, it bought the company. Creative has not been creative with Emu, they have maintained quality, or perhaps have simply maintained hands-off. A little research should show you that Emu still has a very good reputation

Another vote for the Chaintech AV-710. I've been suing one for bit-perfect output in my living room PC for a 2 years and it has worked great.

There is a large thread over at AVS Forums along with instructions and lots of feedback. To get bit-perfect playback you do have to install ASIO4ALL and one other app but I didnt find it that hard and for 25.00 the price is good.

Indeed the accepted wisdom seems to be that you need 24 for recording as you accumulate floating point errors as you process the sound. You then dither down to 16 bit to actually output. On this line of reasoning outputing at 24 bits requires 32 bits of precision during capture and processing. Infact a lot of DSPs and software do work wiith 32 bit samples internally.

Personally I think the limiting factor on the quality of the CDs these days is the firstly the talent and secondly the bloody mastering engineers who all seem to be in a loudness race.

It might be possible to tell the difference between CD and theoretically better formats but you are going to need an accoustically treated room and speakers that cost more than I'm paid in a year to do it.

I have heard you aren't guaranteed to get bit-perfect output from the Chaintech AV-710 or at least it is allot of work to get there.

I think I am in the same position as you Canadiandude, I am looking for a sound card with a good DAC and unamped line out. Cards I have seen mentioned include

Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 HiFi (not sure if it has an direct line out)
E-MU 0404
E-MU 1212
ESI Juli@

I want to avoid the E-MU cards as I hear they suffer the same Creative driver bloat. I would like to buy a good card that I won’t need to upgrade for some time. Can someone offer any better solutions?

The loudness race plays a larger factor indeed



Yes they do

I was wrong, 16-bit is capable of 120dB of SnR, according to some sources.

I'm not talking about recording, I'm talking about playback. CD audio should be theoretically capable of reproducing any sound that can be encoded in it better than we can hear, short of the unlikely situation of a room with a noise floor of below 20dBA pumping out audio at over 140dBA. That's what it would take to hit the limits of 16 bit: over 120 dB of difference between noise floor and audio peaks. In short, you can't listen to the full resolution of sources with greater than 16-bit precision's theoretical maximum for long before damaging your hearing.

Of course, noise floors are going to increase as you layer tracks, so you slowly lose SnR in the recording stage with each mix you make.

Back on topic

Canadiandude have you considered a USB sound card or does it have to be PCI? There is the new E-MU 0404 USB and probably many others.

edit: my mistake

No they don't.

I have read a number of discussions and reviews on Head-Fi which would contradict you. But I personally have never tried their products and am not here to argue the point.

Anyone can post discussions and reviews on head fi. I would pay closer attention to those discussions and reviews from people who have used E-MU cards.

Generally to review something I believe you have to have used it first. Im not going to say E-MU is good or bad, just report what I have read elsewhere.

Canadiandude another card you might like to take a look at is the Echo Audio MiaMidi and they also produce some FireWire sound cards.

A 16bit system is able to reach about 96dB of snr, but can reach about 120dB of dynamic range, using a good dithering (this will reduce the snr).

If you read carefully enough, it is those who never use EMU cards before that say so.

Noise-shaped dither is usually (almost always?) inaudible anyway, right?

Yes, nearly always. Unless there is some non-linearity in your playback system, noise shaped dither should increase the dynamic range and what you perceive to be SNR. Obviously the 'real' SNR cannot and does not change.

I can't even tell the difference between noise-shaped dither being on, or off, but if having it enabled may increase percieved dynamic range, I'm leaving it enabled. It sounds like a good thing especially because I use lossy files and RG.

there is probably a 95% chance that I wont have any use for any analog outputs on this soundcard, isnt noise shaping just a wighted dither which helps reduce digital artifacts from jitter and poor recording and poor lowpass filter, doesnt it actually decrease the SNR becasue it introduces low-level noise(which you arent supposed to hear)
I need the optical out to feed to an external DAC and headphone amp.
I could use the Digital Coax but i have a feeling the signal might degrade over 50 feet, not sure tho plus isnt 50' coax expensive.

Both S/PDIF coax and Toslink have definite cable length limitations. I don't recall the specifics because I've never had a need for more than 10 feet. 50 feet might be pushing, or even exceeding, the limit without some kind of repeater hardware in between. I would recommend checking those requirements before planning too much.

While it isn't relevant for your soundcard choice, noise shaping is almost always used when dithering. It reduces the audibility of dither which can become quite noticeable when applied multiple times, such as doing much editing on a 16 bit file. Dither is a necessity with the best (16 bit) recordings, having the lowest jitter, and everything else approaching perfection. It isn't a fix for something done poorly.

On the other hand, dither may be irrelevant for the majority of today's pop and rock music. It's result is not noticeable at high signal levels, and much of that kind of music is all about loudness, as has been so often discussed.

I know you can get over 50 foot optical and the only reason i would believe 50 foot coax would be scarce is because it needs to be shielded making 50' fairly expensive

im thinking of either
soundcard>optical out>reciever(Yamaha RX-V2200 below)>optical out>DAC>headphone AMP
-OR-
soundcard>optical out>DAC>Analog out>Reciever
>Headphone AMP
-OR-
soundcard>optical out>Reciever
>coax>DAC>AMP And viceversa

Check out this product instead:

http://www.wavelengthaudio.com/usbdac.html

Anything that is similar to this that uses USB will be bit perfect and jitter free (since USB can communicate both ways, it checks every transmission it sends to eliminate jitter). Just send the analog output straight to the analog inputs on your stereo-- it should sound great about as perfect as you could imagine (as long as your stereo does not convert it back to digital in teh box for processing or eq purposes, a good analog unit would be ideal).

I think this product is probably great (I don't own one so I can't say for sure, but I'd love to own one to see), but it costs too much money (the reason why I don't own one). I hope something comes out from a more mainstream company that will cost only a few hundred bucks and do the same thing. I don't like custom shop items like this, but I gotta say it seems like this is the way of the future.

Creative X-fi has a Bitmatched playback setting!

Oddy enough so do the Audigy 4 and Audigy 2 Value, but they require an external dongle for optical or coaxial input/output.

Ah, that's what I meant. Thanks for the correction.

Now im not correcting you beacuse i dont know enough to argue, but im just WONDERING if the SNR without dithering has to be less than the Dynamic range, i can see how dithering can increase that. because correct me if im wrong an i know i will haha, but the dynamic range of 16 bit audio is 20*log(2^(16-1))=90.3dB the minus one because of the "least significant bit or something" and if you just do strait 20*log(2^16))=96.3dB, or Aprox 6dB for every bit... is that where the 96 comes from or it that a tottaly different calculation?

I would say that getting "Bit-Perfect" output from the 710 isn't horribly difficult, but sorting through all the information that has been posted about this can be challenging. I recently purchased a 710 for this reason, and had it up and running properly in just a few minutes, but then again I had done quite a bit of research beforehand.

Unfortunately the driver situation with the 710 is a little sketchy... the VIA reference drivers are workable, but the included control panel is a complete disaster (its usable, but ugly and very badly written), and you are forced to use earlier driver revisions (previous to the 5.00 series) to retain normal use of the "good" (Wolfson DAC) output. The are "other" driver solutions, but that involves modifying (flashing) the card... which in turn means you lose all the analog outputs.

At any rate, I also ended up purchasing a Julia@ (for my newest system), which I found to be an exceptional sound card. The drivers are small, user friendly, and work extremely well; the only major problem is that none of the Julia@'s drivers seem to be WHQL signed (this could be a problem for Vista adopters?). The Julia@ also seems to be fully supported by Linux's ALSA, though I haven't had an opportunity to verify this myself. On a side note, Audiotrak is a division of ESI, who also manufactures the Julia@.

From the actual measurements i've seen, the 1212m seems to be technically superior, but Creative (or even Creative associated) products have left a a bad taste in my mouth over the last few years (or maybe even decade). After examining the 0404 and the 1212m drivers I knew I wouldn't be happy with either of these cards...



So far as I could tell from examining the 1212m's driver package, it utlizies the same unified driver as the Live!/Audigy/X-Fi, which suffer from some serious levels of "bloat". In addition to the "bloat", Creative's drivers use extremely proprietary installation methods, leaving you with reduced functionality if you attempt to install the device directly from the Device Manager (or through unattended installations). While the largest majority of users will be unaffected by this, it was really the deal breaker for me when considering any of the EMU cards.

Having been a user of Creative products since approximately 1996, and experiencing their VXD->WDM transition first hand (which left many of us out in the cold for quite some time), their drivers have always been sub-par, regardless of how well the card is actually designed.

-----
Domain

May I know what/when is the last Creative card you bought?

A few thing you maybe not aware of:
1. You can choose to select to install Driver only for Creative cards now.
2. EMU cards driver is different from Creative. There is additional FPGA on board for EMU.

The last card I owned from Creative was an Audigy 4 Pro, though i've also owned an Audigy Platinum eX, Live! (Original), and a variety of other cards dating back to the AWE16/AWE32 line.

Choice of driver only install is irrellevant when the driver itself exceedes nearly 80mb uncompressed (though in all fairness alot of this has to do with soundfonts). As for the EMU cards driver being different from the other lines, I assume you mean the driver for the EMU 1212m is as follows:

1212m Driver

Being particularly familiar with the layout of the Creative driver over the years, the files included in package are based directly on the same driver one would download for the Live!/Audigy/X-Fi... in fact the Live!/Audigy/X-Fi driver actually contains the numerous identifiers for E-DSP (and vice versa). Irregardless of whether or not the EMU cards are designed differently, if their driver set is based on Creative's unified architecture, then they will suffer similiar problems much like their consumer counterparts.

But... I could be wrong, I don't have a 1212m here to test with, so perhaps a extremely well designed driver is hiding somewhere in all the rest of the bloat included with that download.