quasiuser

hi there.

just revealed the awesomeness of digital dsp processing and spdif output directly to receiver.

i got sb live 5.1 that is recognized as sb0102 10k1 e480 card.

suppose newer audigy cards have wider dsp capabilities.

would you suggest a most powerful card please? one with optical outputs for instance (but not limited to, cause spdif works just perfect).

Russ

DSP capability (amount of resources available, etc) is basically the same in all 10k2 cards, so it would be a matter of what other features you want, and kX compatibility.

For optical I/O, you would want a card with a drive bay (e.g. Audigy Drive, etc).

pkozerski

I have Audigy 2 ZS GOLD and it works great

Temragon

2 ZSes (350s) sell for around 25$ USD (buyout) on ebay, they're easy to pick up and work nicely.

quasiuser

is that true that choosing card from mentioned below i get better latencies for music production and better quality for analog outputs (headphons in my case)?


will the cards be able to send 24 bit signal to a receiver via digital outputs? (using kx drivers for sure)


X-Fi Titanium: asio 2.0, has optical out (thus, no coax?).
X-Fi Extreme Gamer: asio 2.0, no optical out (coax present).

no asio cards: X-Fi Extreme Audio PCI Express, Audigy SE.


is asio important for latencies? or is it only a driver issue?


at the moment i am chosing something with coax out since it's possible to make a 3-4 meters length cable for that.

Russ

kX does not support X-FI cards: kX Soundblaster Compatibility List
As for the capabilities of the X-FI cards, I can only lookup the info (same as you) to see what it supports...

I think latencies (related to music production (i.e. recording/playback)) are more about the driver ((assuming that the driver supports things like ASIO, etc) some drivers perform better than others) and the OS, then which sound card you have.

ASIO is important for low latencies but is not the only option (there is also Kernel Streaming and WaveRT (with newer versions of Windows), etc that may have thier own advantages/disadvantages). I suggest you lookup up ASIO to see what it is, and that should give you a better overall picture of what is involved.

quasiuser

thank you Russ,

i see now that the only benefit i can get is optical outs and maybe better DAC for headphones/whatever. that's sad news.

thanks again

Russ

Well, as you supposed, you also get more DSP resources (means you could load more effects, etc) with Audigy models (-vs- your Live! 5.1), plus 24 bit ASIO, AC3-Passthru, etc.

Beyond the above there is also the EMU models that kX supports (e.g. 1212, 1616, 1820, etc) which are higher end cards (I do not know much about them, nor if they are fully supported by kX), but again, I do not think that a different card model is going to make any difference in recording latency, as that is mostly an issue with the OS.