Recommend a better sound card?
Can you suggest a better sound card to me?
The cheap sound card I use in my PC picks up a lot of electrical noise. Digital
circuitry emits a lot of RF noise, and this is picked up in the analog circuitry
of my sound card as a crackle and buzzing sound. Also, if I try to digitize
sound input, the audio files will have a lot of the same kind of noise.
The noise on playback didn't bother me when I used speakers, but tonight I
switched to using headphones, which make the noise much more obvious.
The noise pickup when digitizing audio input makes my PC useless for making
audio files from my tapes and vinyl LPs; I've had no luck with several other PCs
and sound cards I've tried. The only computer I've been able to capture sound
with successfully was my ancient Macintosh 8500, which was an "AV" model that
was built with better sound hardware than is usually the case for consumer
computers. (Try capturing thirty seconds of silence on your own sound card,
then play it back with the volume turned all the way up. Likely you'll hear
this noise too.)
I'm looking for a new sound card that will have as little of this noise as
possible, and ideally will be of very good audio fidelity. It turns out that one
can get sound cards as fancy as one cares to pay for, that are mostly used for
professional audio production or for home recording studios by musicians, that
have as much as 32 bits per sample and many channels, but those are expensive
and require special application software.
I'd like a good 16 bit stereo sound card that I can use for playing Oggs and
MP3s, maybe do some Voice over IP, and for playing CDs on my PC. But I want this
card to be as good as possible given that it's just 16 bit stereo.
Ideally it would have an external pod containing all the analog circuitry, so
the audio circuits would be isolated from the electrical noise inside the PC
case. All the professional sound cards do this, but I don't know if any consumer
sound cards do.
My hopeful new sound card will need to work with Linux, BeOS and Windows 2000.
Extra credit if the card's vendor provides complete hardware specs to Free
Software developers.
If you'd like to email me your recommendation send it to crawford@goingware.com
Thanks for your help.
Mike
--
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com
crawford@goingware.com
Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.
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out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared,
be in doubt, but don't be gagged."
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