The UA-25 is probably closest to what I'm looking for, and looks good on paper. Balanced I/O, 24-bit, 96kHz, and balanced I/O - jacks on the back but combijacks on the front is nice, and the phono outputs make sense when feeding low-end gear.
However, the XLR inputs are only expecting nominal -60 to -20dBu (while the jacks can do -36 to +4dBu). So I'm a little unsurprised about clipping from professional sources on XLR inputs - which is a shame since that's exactly the problem we've got at the moment with these rubbish sound cards (worked around at the moment using NetJACK to pipe audio from a decent sound card fed from the same source to the other PC across the LAN, but not a great long-term fix, especially with liquidsoap's... "interesting" JACK behaviour). Of course, there's an argument that the fix is an unbalancing transformer or a 20dBu attenuator... EMU 0202 looks nice, but is unbalanced as far as I can see. Cheers, James Harrison On 26/03/2012 12:46, Wayne Merricks wrote: > I've played with a few USB cards for various reasons. Out of all of them > the EMU 0202 works pretty nicely, the only drawback is I can't remember if > it is balanced: > > http://www.creative.com/emu/products/product.aspx?category=610&pid=15186 > > Its been going strong for years and survived being bashed about on several > OBs. The only thing I don't like is under Linux the monitoring interferes > with the output (I haven't used it under Windows for a long time). So > just don't use the monitoring if you're broadcasting with it. > > Its probably an alsamixer setting somewhere but I never bothered to figure > it out. > > I've been using it at the end of a broadcast chain with JACK to do both > Internet streaming (via Icecast/darkice) and compression with Jamin. Its > been running constantly with no interruptions since Christmas. > > I've also got an Edirol UA-25 which is solid > (http://www.roland.com/products/en/UA-25/). I only use it to take a feed > from a soft phone (via a laptop) but its doing the job. It was quite > touchy about the signal level though and I found that the output from our > old analog desks (circa 1993) was only just passable without clipping at > the lowest gain and signal levels. Its been working for a few years > either way and was in a box of spares before that. > > The Echo Gina 3G was ok once I unmuted the right output in alsamixer (no > idea why that was muted by default). I haven't used this long term though > so I have no idea on reliability. > > Finally, I didn't have much luck with an Alesis io 2. It was a bit fiddly > to setup (it seemed to distort quite horribly) and then died after 6 > months. I might have just ended up with a faulty unit but I wouldn't rush > back to them in a hurry. > > > On Sun, 25 Mar 2012 02:51:04 +0100, James Harrison > <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi all, >> >> I'm wondering if anyone has a recommendation for a cheap (sub-£150) >> sound card, ideally USB, which just has two inputs (optionally two >> outputs) on XLRs (or jacks), balanced, with the ability to handle >> pro-level or consumer-level input, no gain or silly nonsense, just a >> really straightforward rugged ADC (optionally a DAC) with an input level >> select switch (+8), maybe some little screwdriver-operated gain pots? >> >> Just hunting around for cards for a streaming encoder and I simply can't >> find anything close to this - everything's got big friendly gain knobs >> or the connectivity sucks or it's absurdly expensive. I'm pretty sure >> there must be something out there like this, I'm just not looking in the >> right places. ASI cards are all too expensive for us, even the cheap >> ones. >> >> Any experience on what cards you've gone for in this situation? (It's >> being fed by a Sonifex DA6G distribution amplifier - the PC sound card >> we're using presently is turned right down and it's still clipping, as >> to be expected I suppose...) >> >> (USB preferred because the box is a half-height chassis, and USB is a >> bit more versatile, but I'd be interested in anything - can always >> rehouse the box...) > ####################### > Scanned by MailMarshal > ####################### > > ############ > > Attention: > > The information contained in this message is confidential and intended > for the addressee(s) only. If you have received this message in error > or there are any problems, please notify the originator immediately. > The unauthorised use, disclosure, copying or alteration of this message > is strictly forbidden. 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