Re: [Alsa-user] Suitable replacement card for Xonar PCI(e) cards
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alesis-MultiMix-Four-Channel-Integrated-Effects/dp/B00IPF9DX2 You can get really good USB mixers for less than you paid for those cards. If your going to analyse reverb and effect then you need a card with multiple channels as any analysis will fall foul of clock drift on multi card setups. I like alan just use good quality electrets on a preamp but spunds like something more professional and robust might be needed. I suggest you look at the prosumer home recording with a google for ‘multi channel usb mic mixer’ Read a couple of reviews. Latency is pretty easy to find as play spaced ‘tick’ from the output and record and load up in audacity to get a accurate latency. For a single pcie card Creative Sound Blaster Z High Performance Gaming Sound Card < $80 and also include a really good beamforming microphone. Depends what you want to analyse if room impulse is a thing then you want several mics on several channels with something like the 4 channel prob being what you need. Creative is more of a gaming thing but prob cheapest single with mic that is really good quality and you will know the mic is matched to the hardware and has a dsp app that may be something that will of much interest. Sent from Mail<https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows 10 From: Alan Corey<mailto:alan01...@gmail.com> Sent: 14 June 2021 14:11 To: Maarten Duijndam<mailto:m.j.a.duijn...@uu.nl> Cc: alsa-user@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:alsa-user@lists.sourceforge.net>; labbeheer...@uu.nl<mailto:labbeheer...@uu.nl> Subject: Re: [Alsa-user] Suitable replacement card for Xonar PCI(e) cards I'm not sure about the latency since I can't even measure it but I'd go to USB. Being tied to a PCI(e) slot is an awful nuisance these days. Many machines have multiple USB busses, try putting the sound card on a bus without much else if there's a problem. I'm not sure if your application is closer to a language lab or speech recognition. Startech is generally a good company, you can also get these cheaper and faster through Amazon. https://www.startech.com/en-us/search?search_term=usb%20sound I also have a few Chinese clones bought through Aliexpress that seem to work fine for general playback and recording. Preamps aren't just gain but supply operating power to electret microphones. I do amateur nature recordings with home-built 4 transistor preamps and generic electret capsules, maybe $5 parts cost total. On 6/14/21, Maarten Duijndam via Alsa-user wrote: > Dear alsa users, > > We are looking for a replacement card for PCI(e) audio that we are using > in our linguistics laboratory. We have been quite happy with the older > ASUS Xonar D2 pci and ASUS Essence STX II PCIe cards. Unfortunately, > these are out of stock in the Netherlands, I don't know whether they are > still being made. We need quite a number of those devices in roughly > 15-25 pc's in our labs. So they were good value for money at roughly 200 > euro or dollars each. The xonars worked out of the box on recent > versions of Ubuntu and this great to have so we do not have to make > small adjustments to the all pc's in the lab. > > Some background on psychology/linguistics research. We are looking for a > sound card that is easy to use, and without many "expert" features. For > quality speech recordings we are looking for devices that has a high > signal to noise ratio (in practice we used an analog mic preamp and put > the preamps output in the line out of the preamp in the line in of the > xonar cards). Also we like to record as naturally as possible and we > don't value Digital signal processors (DSPs) that mimics special preamps. > Additionally, cards using DSPs might have an internal buffer in which > they do there processing and take additional latency. In artificial > grammar learning or other types of experiments in which speech stimuli > are presented to participant in our lab we greatly value the timing of > the presentation of those speech stimuli. That is: we try to schedule a > stimulus (speech or another sound) with 1ms accuracy. So If we know that > ALSA or another backend uses a eg. 20ms playback/software buffer, we > schedule the stimulus 20 ms ahead of time. We would like to keep any > buffering delays as short as reasonably possible. > > So coming back to the original question, the Xonars we were working with > ran fine in for example Ubuntu-18.04 and even some older distributions. > We would like to find a nice replacement that meets the requirements of > a linguistics lab and are relatively easy to maintain. I don't know if > this is the right place to ask, but I hope to get some input for we have > tried quite a number of PCI(e) devices from expensive RME equipment to > cheaper Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus or very cheap TERRATEC Aureon &g
Re: [Alsa-user] Suitable replacement card for Xonar PCI(e) cards
I'm not sure about the latency since I can't even measure it but I'd go to USB. Being tied to a PCI(e) slot is an awful nuisance these days. Many machines have multiple USB busses, try putting the sound card on a bus without much else if there's a problem. I'm not sure if your application is closer to a language lab or speech recognition. Startech is generally a good company, you can also get these cheaper and faster through Amazon. https://www.startech.com/en-us/search?search_term=usb%20sound I also have a few Chinese clones bought through Aliexpress that seem to work fine for general playback and recording. Preamps aren't just gain but supply operating power to electret microphones. I do amateur nature recordings with home-built 4 transistor preamps and generic electret capsules, maybe $5 parts cost total. On 6/14/21, Maarten Duijndam via Alsa-user wrote: > Dear alsa users, > > We are looking for a replacement card for PCI(e) audio that we are using > in our linguistics laboratory. We have been quite happy with the older > ASUS Xonar D2 pci and ASUS Essence STX II PCIe cards. Unfortunately, > these are out of stock in the Netherlands, I don't know whether they are > still being made. We need quite a number of those devices in roughly > 15-25 pc's in our labs. So they were good value for money at roughly 200 > euro or dollars each. The xonars worked out of the box on recent > versions of Ubuntu and this great to have so we do not have to make > small adjustments to the all pc's in the lab. > > Some background on psychology/linguistics research. We are looking for a > sound card that is easy to use, and without many "expert" features. For > quality speech recordings we are looking for devices that has a high > signal to noise ratio (in practice we used an analog mic preamp and put > the preamps output in the line out of the preamp in the line in of the > xonar cards). Also we like to record as naturally as possible and we > don't value Digital signal processors (DSPs) that mimics special preamps. > Additionally, cards using DSPs might have an internal buffer in which > they do there processing and take additional latency. In artificial > grammar learning or other types of experiments in which speech stimuli > are presented to participant in our lab we greatly value the timing of > the presentation of those speech stimuli. That is: we try to schedule a > stimulus (speech or another sound) with 1ms accuracy. So If we know that > ALSA or another backend uses a eg. 20ms playback/software buffer, we > schedule the stimulus 20 ms ahead of time. We would like to keep any > buffering delays as short as reasonably possible. > > So coming back to the original question, the Xonars we were working with > ran fine in for example Ubuntu-18.04 and even some older distributions. > We would like to find a nice replacement that meets the requirements of > a linguistics lab and are relatively easy to maintain. I don't know if > this is the right place to ask, but I hope to get some input for we have > tried quite a number of PCI(e) devices from expensive RME equipment to > cheaper Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus or very cheap TERRATEC Aureon > devices. Perhaps we should move to USB class 1 and/or 2 compliant devices. > > Hopefully some of you have experience with such equipment and is willing > to give us a nice suggestion. > > Best regards and thank you for your time, > > Maarten > > > > ___ > Alsa-user mailing list > Alsa-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-user > -- - Education is contagious. ___ Alsa-user mailing list Alsa-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-user
[Alsa-user] Suitable replacement card for Xonar PCI(e) cards
Dear alsa users, We are looking for a replacement card for PCI(e) audio that we are using in our linguistics laboratory. We have been quite happy with the older ASUS Xonar D2 pci and ASUS Essence STX II PCIe cards. Unfortunately, these are out of stock in the Netherlands, I don't know whether they are still being made. We need quite a number of those devices in roughly 15-25 pc's in our labs. So they were good value for money at roughly 200 euro or dollars each. The xonars worked out of the box on recent versions of Ubuntu and this great to have so we do not have to make small adjustments to the all pc's in the lab. Some background on psychology/linguistics research. We are looking for a sound card that is easy to use, and without many "expert" features. For quality speech recordings we are looking for devices that has a high signal to noise ratio (in practice we used an analog mic preamp and put the preamps output in the line out of the preamp in the line in of the xonar cards). Also we like to record as naturally as possible and we don't value Digital signal processors (DSPs) that mimics special preamps. Additionally, cards using DSPs might have an internal buffer in which they do there processing and take additional latency. In artificial grammar learning or other types of experiments in which speech stimuli are presented to participant in our lab we greatly value the timing of the presentation of those speech stimuli. That is: we try to schedule a stimulus (speech or another sound) with 1ms accuracy. So If we know that ALSA or another backend uses a eg. 20ms playback/software buffer, we schedule the stimulus 20 ms ahead of time. We would like to keep any buffering delays as short as reasonably possible. So coming back to the original question, the Xonars we were working with ran fine in for example Ubuntu-18.04 and even some older distributions. We would like to find a nice replacement that meets the requirements of a linguistics lab and are relatively easy to maintain. I don't know if this is the right place to ask, but I hope to get some input for we have tried quite a number of PCI(e) devices from expensive RME equipment to cheaper Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus or very cheap TERRATEC Aureon devices. Perhaps we should move to USB class 1 and/or 2 compliant devices. Hopefully some of you have experience with such equipment and is willing to give us a nice suggestion. Best regards and thank you for your time, Maarten ___ Alsa-user mailing list Alsa-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-user
