Digital Audio Recorder Questions

TingSern Wong · February 14th, 2004, 11:27 PM

M-Audio :: it does NOT work on all Firewire cards. I am using the Adaptec Duo (both Firewire & USB 2 combo) - and software bombs :-(. Check with them - they only support a subset of the Firewire cards in the market .... I wished they would have told me this information before ..... too late now. It worked on my Mac Powerbook however. But, all the high end are PC based.

Douglas Spotted Eagle · February 15th, 2004, 12:15 AM

the 410 works on anything that is OHCI compliant. In PC and/or Mac. I'm using my 410 with my Powerbook and my VAIO, both OHCI compliant connections. There will always be weird, non-OHCI compliant cards out there, but if the card maker chooses to be out of spec, such as adaptec has done, then it's their issue...
SIIG, ADS, Unibrain, Ratoc, Orange Micro....these are all 100 %OHCI compliant cards.

TingSern Wong · February 15th, 2004, 12:26 AM

OHCI - the Adaptec is compliant. But, the real problem with Firewire is that there is NO software drivers to write. Everything is done at the firmware (chipset) level. While there are lots of Firewire cards around, there are only very few chipset manufacturers. This particular chipset that Adaptec uses is not very happy talking to the M-Audio device. I don't have any problems using the Adaptec to connect to other things - hard-disks, scanners, cameras, removable media reader/writer, etc. Hence, I think the blame ought to fall upon M-Audio rather than Adaptec. They should have place a list of cards their device can work with in a visible area (on website or on packaging) - rather wait for folks to buy it and then find it don't really work on their cards.

TS

Douglas Spotted Eagle · February 15th, 2004, 12:38 AM

I have to disagree. M-Audio can only make their drivers to suit a spec. Adaptec chooses to buy their OEM cards from Kouwell, a division of Kou-tech in Taiwan. The cards use both Lucent and NEC chipsets, which are known to have issues. There are also some models of TI chipsets that carry unique instructions, that cause them to not be totally OHCI compliant, and have issues with other devices.
As a beta tester of the 410 and other 1394 products that M-Audio is/has created, and same for Echo and other companies, the only problems we encountered were problems with motherboards using Lucent and NEC, or cards with same. There were some strange BIOS' we hit working with Soyo and NTI motherboards too, but again, these were boards that claimed OHCI compatibility, but truly weren't. MOTU and Echo, ESI and Aardvark have all experienced the same problems with non-compatible OHCI claimants. I've got a pile of em.
BTW, at NAMM this year, I ran into trouble with the Kouwell card in a Ulead-tradeshow machine, so ran to FRYE's and bought a 25.00 Belkin card. Fixed it right up.

TingSern Wong · February 15th, 2004, 12:45 AM

Ah ... I have to thank you for that marvellous insight. You reckon that Orange Micro will work then? Great .... looks like I will need to purchase an equivalent Orange Micro Duo (Both Firewire and USB 2) and rip out the Adaptec Duo then. All this while, I thought it was a motherboard combination issue. The Adaptec is an add-on card - my motherboard don't have any Firewire/USB 2 on board. So, changing it is a lot easier for me.

Thanks once again,
TS

Douglas Spotted Eagle · February 15th, 2004, 12:48 AM

The orange should work fine. However, during our beta tests for a different purpose 2 years ago, ONLY SIIG, Unibrain, and ADS met all IEEE1394 OHCI compliancy specs at a 100% level. that's changed now, but for me personally, I only trust these 3 brands. Personally, I like ADS, but that's because they have really awesome people working there. And they are kinda the kings of 1394 products.

Keith Luken · February 17th, 2004, 06:03 AM

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Easler : The iriver is working very well for me for recording vows or the officiant in weddings for me. They are wav files, really great quality, I can cut and paste the files in when I'm done. No sync issues so far. The 44k wav and 48k dv audio is matching up fine there are no input level adjustments on the iriver so you would have to adjust the output of the board. -->>>

Well the Sony MD has a minor issue, you can't transfer audio captured on it back to the PC unless you do a real time analog connection into a sound card and record it back. I hear many do this and it works fine, but I prefer to keep the original file without another D/A/D conversion. I like the looks of the Iriver and decided that I will try it and ordered one last night. It has 2 minor draw backs from what I can tell, the Line In recording levels are not adjustable and there is a maximum recording time before the unit will auto-stop. For WAV files it is around 795MB and MP3 it is 195MB. Since this is going to be a 2+ hour show I will have to go with MP3 recording at 128k which should give me about 3 hours.

Douglas Spotted Eagle · February 17th, 2004, 08:44 AM

K, at the risk of sounding offensive, how could you reasonably compare the insignificant loss of transferring over a quality analog line and re-conversion to digital to recording an MP3 at 128k? It just doesn't wash. An MP3 at anything less than 192 is effectively a waste of time unless it's JUST dialog, and you don't expect to do much processing, particularly noise reduction, as the lower resolution MP3 won't permit much processing. Whereas with even a wma recorder at high bitrates of 128 can still be processed appropriately, an MD still has a substantially higher data rate and compression scheme, and by comparison, you lose a *lot* more by going to 128k compression vs recording MD and dealing with the admittedly PITA of real-time transfer. You can always buy an MD with optical....but they ain't cheap.
Using a short, quality cable, I guarantee you won't hear the difference between a single D/A/D conversion from the original. I challenge even a scope to see the difference unless you've got a really cheap soundcard.

Keith Luken · February 17th, 2004, 08:53 AM

<<<-- Originally posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle : K, at the risk of sounding offensive, how in the world could you possibly compare the insignificant loss of transferring over a quality analog line and re-conversion to digital to recording an MP3 at 128k? It just doesn't wash. An MP3 at anything less than 192 is effectively a waste of time unless it's JUST dialog, and you don't expect to do much processing, particularly noise reduction, as the lower resolution MP3 won't permit much processing. Whereas with even a wma recorder at high bitrates of 128 can still be processed appropriately, an MD still has a substantially higher data rate and compression scheme, and by comparison, you lose a *lot* more by going to 128k compression vs recording MD and dealing with the admittedly PITA of real-time transfer. You can always buy an MD with optical....but they ain't cheap.
Using a short, quality cable, I guarantee you won't hear the difference between a single D/A/D conversion from the original. I challenge even a scope to see the difference unless you've got a really cheap soundcard. -->>>

Thanks!
I guess I will try to do a comparison then, I have always found that even decent sound cards (SB Audigy and such) tend to be a haven for internal CP case RF noise/interference. I have not tried it in my new system with the Audigy 2, but maybe I'll be surpsied. WMA recorders? Does anyone make on with a big drive, the IRiver I am looking at only records MP3 and WAV.

Douglas Spotted Eagle · February 17th, 2004, 09:05 AM

:-) I wasn't counting Audigy and the like as a 'good' sound card. Which would make all the difference in the world. They use really low end DACS, most any on-board sound card will. Remember, I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to audio...
M-Audio 410
Echo Layla, Gina, Darla, Indigo
Aardvark
Frontier
If you are a Mac User, the MOTU products are great, for the PC they aren't.
These are all good soundcards.

Keith Luken · February 17th, 2004, 08:16 PM

<<<-- Originally posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle : :-) I wasn't counting Audigy and the like as a 'good' sound card. Which would make all the difference in the world. They use really low end DACS, most any on-board sound card will. Remember, I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to audio...
M-Audio 410
Echo Layla, Gina, Darla, Indigo
Aardvark
Frontier
If you are a Mac User, the MOTU products are great, for the PC they aren't.
These are all good soundcards. -->>>

Well I guess the Audigy 2 is better than my older SB cards, I hooked the MD to the Line in and did some test recordings. It sounds good, and while the real time 1X import is a PITA, I guess I can deal with it based on all the feedback on how good the MD is for catpuring excellent audio resolution.
Thanks everyone for your help! I'll post a reply in a week or so when I get the project done and imported.

Douglas Spotted Eagle · February 18th, 2004, 12:35 AM

The audigy 2 cards do use a decent DAC, and they are fairly quiet, so you should be great. I believe the Audigy 2's use the Sony CX chips, which some of the less expensive breakout boxes use too.
Remember that people have been using much lower quality cards for broadcast for a few years, so a lot of this sort of discussion is somewhat moot in real world terms. An MD is lightyears better than what was available 5 years ago for live shooting, if it's a good MD. Many a PBS, National Geo, and CNN story have been audio captured on lesser tools. Like I said, I'm a bit of a snob.... :-)
Let us know how it turns out.

Anthony Williams · February 18th, 2004, 03:34 AM

These firewire units will all need some sort of power option I am assuming. If I am going to record to a laptop than I want to get an interface that can be used for both field and home on a desktop.

I will be picking up the firewire 410 as the price seems quite right compared to others like metric halo and Motu 828mkII. But is the 410 like the halo as I don't think the halo needs an external power unit.

Since I am trying to get into the laptop recording biz, I would like to make my solutions as portable as possible.

TingSern Wong · February 18th, 2004, 06:40 AM

Eagle,

I would like to point out that in any audio system, the strength of the entire chain lies in the weakest link. I am sure most of you will know that. In this instance, the quality of the DACs, amplifiers, preamps, etc ... are mostly measureable in 0.0x% THD, SN ratio = 80+dB, etc, etc. However, the biggest distortion inducer in any audio chain lies in the speakers. I have at my disposal a pair of Genelec 1029 and 7050 (subwoofer). I also have a pair of original JBL professional series speakers (15" bass, 7" horn, 3" crystal). One single audio source (CD) played on Genelec versus JBL sounds different. Both of them are excellent speakers. For vocals, nothing beats the JBL. For instrumentals, the Genelec is extremely neutral ... I give it to you that the amplifiers etc all mostly output more or less the same audio waveform. The differences in the final sound are produced by the speakers.

Thank you,
TS

Keith Luken · February 26th, 2004, 10:16 PM

Well I used the Sony MD for the gig and plugged right into their sound board. Let the MD record on LP4, had no choice it was to be unattanded for over 3 hours. Had to manual 1x import through my SB audigy2 and it sounds excellent. The only drawback so far is when I go to sync the audio to the video I can sync them perfectly at the begining of the video, but by about 45-50 minutes in there is obvious drift where they are a way out of sync. I guess I will have to break the event innto individual clips for each performance (about 3-5 minutes each) and sync each clip individually. I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this happen? Am I expecting too much from consumer grade equipment.

February 15th, 2004, 12:15 AM	#17
Douglas Spotted Eagle VASST Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Stockton, UT Posts: 5,648	the 410 works on anything that is OHCI compliant. In PC and/or Mac. I'm using my 410 with my Powerbook and my VAIO, both OHCI compliant connections. There will always be weird, non-OHCI compliant cards out there, but if the card maker chooses to be out of spec, such as adaptec has done, then it's their issue... SIIG, ADS, Unibrain, Ratoc, Orange Micro....these are all 100 %OHCI compliant cards. __________________ Douglas Spotted Eagle/Spot Author, producer, composer Certified Sony Vegas Trainer http://www.vasst.com

February 15th, 2004, 12:38 AM	#19
Douglas Spotted Eagle VASST Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Stockton, UT Posts: 5,648	I have to disagree. M-Audio can only make their drivers to suit a spec. Adaptec chooses to buy their OEM cards from Kouwell, a division of Kou-tech in Taiwan. The cards use both Lucent and NEC chipsets, which are known to have issues. There are also some models of TI chipsets that carry unique instructions, that cause them to not be totally OHCI compliant, and have issues with other devices. As a beta tester of the 410 and other 1394 products that M-Audio is/has created, and same for Echo and other companies, the only problems we encountered were problems with motherboards using Lucent and NEC, or cards with same. There were some strange BIOS' we hit working with Soyo and NTI motherboards too, but again, these were boards that claimed OHCI compatibility, but truly weren't. MOTU and Echo, ESI and Aardvark have all experienced the same problems with non-compatible OHCI claimants. I've got a pile of em. BTW, at NAMM this year, I ran into trouble with the Kouwell card in a Ulead-tradeshow machine, so ran to FRYE's and bought a 25.00 Belkin card. Fixed it right up. __________________ Douglas Spotted Eagle/Spot Author, producer, composer Certified Sony Vegas Trainer http://www.vasst.com

February 15th, 2004, 12:48 AM	#21
Douglas Spotted Eagle VASST Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Stockton, UT Posts: 5,648	The orange should work fine. However, during our beta tests for a different purpose 2 years ago, ONLY SIIG, Unibrain, and ADS met all IEEE1394 OHCI compliancy specs at a 100% level. that's changed now, but for me personally, I only trust these 3 brands. Personally, I like ADS, but that's because they have really awesome people working there. And they are kinda the kings of 1394 products. __________________ Douglas Spotted Eagle/Spot Author, producer, composer Certified Sony Vegas Trainer http://www.vasst.com

February 17th, 2004, 08:44 AM	#23
Douglas Spotted Eagle VASST Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Stockton, UT Posts: 5,648	K, at the risk of sounding offensive, how could you reasonably compare the insignificant loss of transferring over a quality analog line and re-conversion to digital to recording an MP3 at 128k? It just doesn't wash. An MP3 at anything less than 192 is effectively a waste of time unless it's JUST dialog, and you don't expect to do much processing, particularly noise reduction, as the lower resolution MP3 won't permit much processing. Whereas with even a wma recorder at high bitrates of 128 can still be processed appropriately, an MD still has a substantially higher data rate and compression scheme, and by comparison, you lose a lot more by going to 128k compression vs recording MD and dealing with the admittedly PITA of real-time transfer. You can always buy an MD with optical....but they ain't cheap. Using a short, quality cable, I guarantee you won't hear the difference between a single D/A/D conversion from the original. I challenge even a scope to see the difference unless you've got a really cheap soundcard. __________________ Douglas Spotted Eagle/Spot Author, producer, composer Certified Sony Vegas Trainer http://www.vasst.com

February 17th, 2004, 09:05 AM	#25
Douglas Spotted Eagle VASST Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Stockton, UT Posts: 5,648	:-) I wasn't counting Audigy and the like as a 'good' sound card. Which would make all the difference in the world. They use really low end DACS, most any on-board sound card will. Remember, I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to audio... M-Audio 410 Echo Layla, Gina, Darla, Indigo Aardvark Frontier If you are a Mac User, the MOTU products are great, for the PC they aren't. These are all good soundcards. __________________ Douglas Spotted Eagle/Spot Author, producer, composer Certified Sony Vegas Trainer http://www.vasst.com

February 14th, 2004, 11:27 PM	#16
TingSern Wong Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Singapore, Rep of SINGAPORE Posts: 749	M-Audio :: it does NOT work on all Firewire cards. I am using the Adaptec Duo (both Firewire & USB 2 combo) - and software bombs :-(. Check with them - they only support a subset of the Firewire cards in the market .... I wished they would have told me this information before ..... too late now. It worked on my Mac Powerbook however. But, all the high end are PC based.

February 15th, 2004, 12:26 AM	#18
TingSern Wong Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Singapore, Rep of SINGAPORE Posts: 749	OHCI - the Adaptec is compliant. But, the real problem with Firewire is that there is NO software drivers to write. Everything is done at the firmware (chipset) level. While there are lots of Firewire cards around, there are only very few chipset manufacturers. This particular chipset that Adaptec uses is not very happy talking to the M-Audio device. I don't have any problems using the Adaptec to connect to other things - hard-disks, scanners, cameras, removable media reader/writer, etc. Hence, I think the blame ought to fall upon M-Audio rather than Adaptec. They should have place a list of cards their device can work with in a visible area (on website or on packaging) - rather wait for folks to buy it and then find it don't really work on their cards. TS

February 15th, 2004, 12:45 AM	#20
TingSern Wong Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Singapore, Rep of SINGAPORE Posts: 749	Ah ... I have to thank you for that marvellous insight. You reckon that Orange Micro will work then? Great .... looks like I will need to purchase an equivalent Orange Micro Duo (Both Firewire and USB 2) and rip out the Adaptec Duo then. All this while, I thought it was a motherboard combination issue. The Adaptec is an add-on card - my motherboard don't have any Firewire/USB 2 on board. So, changing it is a lot easier for me. Thanks once again, TS

February 17th, 2004, 06:03 AM	#22
Keith Luken Major Player Join Date: Aug 2002 Posts: 200	<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Easler : The iriver is working very well for me for recording vows or the officiant in weddings for me. They are wav files, really great quality, I can cut and paste the files in when I'm done. No sync issues so far. The 44k wav and 48k dv audio is matching up fine there are no input level adjustments on the iriver so you would have to adjust the output of the board. -->>> Well the Sony MD has a minor issue, you can't transfer audio captured on it back to the PC unless you do a real time analog connection into a sound card and record it back. I hear many do this and it works fine, but I prefer to keep the original file without another D/A/D conversion. I like the looks of the Iriver and decided that I will try it and ordered one last night. It has 2 minor draw backs from what I can tell, the Line In recording levels are not adjustable and there is a maximum recording time before the unit will auto-stop. For WAV files it is around 795MB and MP3 it is 195MB. Since this is going to be a 2+ hour show I will have to go with MP3 recording at 128k which should give me about 3 hours.

February 17th, 2004, 08:53 AM	#24
Keith Luken Major Player Join Date: Aug 2002 Posts: 200	<<<-- Originally posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle : K, at the risk of sounding offensive, how in the world could you possibly compare the insignificant loss of transferring over a quality analog line and re-conversion to digital to recording an MP3 at 128k? It just doesn't wash. An MP3 at anything less than 192 is effectively a waste of time unless it's JUST dialog, and you don't expect to do much processing, particularly noise reduction, as the lower resolution MP3 won't permit much processing. Whereas with even a wma recorder at high bitrates of 128 can still be processed appropriately, an MD still has a substantially higher data rate and compression scheme, and by comparison, you lose a lot more by going to 128k compression vs recording MD and dealing with the admittedly PITA of real-time transfer. You can always buy an MD with optical....but they ain't cheap. Using a short, quality cable, I guarantee you won't hear the difference between a single D/A/D conversion from the original. I challenge even a scope to see the difference unless you've got a really cheap soundcard. -->>> Thanks! I guess I will try to do a comparison then, I have always found that even decent sound cards (SB Audigy and such) tend to be a haven for internal CP case RF noise/interference. I have not tried it in my new system with the Audigy 2, but maybe I'll be surpsied. WMA recorders? Does anyone make on with a big drive, the IRiver I am looking at only records MP3 and WAV.

February 17th, 2004, 08:16 PM	#26
Keith Luken Major Player Join Date: Aug 2002 Posts: 200	<<<-- Originally posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle : :-) I wasn't counting Audigy and the like as a 'good' sound card. Which would make all the difference in the world. They use really low end DACS, most any on-board sound card will. Remember, I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to audio... M-Audio 410 Echo Layla, Gina, Darla, Indigo Aardvark Frontier If you are a Mac User, the MOTU products are great, for the PC they aren't. These are all good soundcards. -->>> Well I guess the Audigy 2 is better than my older SB cards, I hooked the MD to the Line in and did some test recordings. It sounds good, and while the real time 1X import is a PITA, I guess I can deal with it based on all the feedback on how good the MD is for catpuring excellent audio resolution. Thanks everyone for your help! I'll post a reply in a week or so when I get the project done and imported.

February 18th, 2004, 12:35 AM	#27
Douglas Spotted Eagle VASST Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Stockton, UT Posts: 5,648	The audigy 2 cards do use a decent DAC, and they are fairly quiet, so you should be great. I believe the Audigy 2's use the Sony CX chips, which some of the less expensive breakout boxes use too. Remember that people have been using much lower quality cards for broadcast for a few years, so a lot of this sort of discussion is somewhat moot in real world terms. An MD is lightyears better than what was available 5 years ago for live shooting, if it's a good MD. Many a PBS, National Geo, and CNN story have been audio captured on lesser tools. Like I said, I'm a bit of a snob.... :-) Let us know how it turns out. __________________ Douglas Spotted Eagle/Spot Author, producer, composer Certified Sony Vegas Trainer http://www.vasst.com

February 18th, 2004, 03:34 AM	#28
Anthony Williams Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 26	These firewire units will all need some sort of power option I am assuming. If I am going to record to a laptop than I want to get an interface that can be used for both field and home on a desktop. I will be picking up the firewire 410 as the price seems quite right compared to others like metric halo and Motu 828mkII. But is the 410 like the halo as I don't think the halo needs an external power unit. Since I am trying to get into the laptop recording biz, I would like to make my solutions as portable as possible.

February 18th, 2004, 06:40 AM	#29
TingSern Wong Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Singapore, Rep of SINGAPORE Posts: 749	Eagle, I would like to point out that in any audio system, the strength of the entire chain lies in the weakest link. I am sure most of you will know that. In this instance, the quality of the DACs, amplifiers, preamps, etc ... are mostly measureable in 0.0x% THD, SN ratio = 80+dB, etc, etc. However, the biggest distortion inducer in any audio chain lies in the speakers. I have at my disposal a pair of Genelec 1029 and 7050 (subwoofer). I also have a pair of original JBL professional series speakers (15" bass, 7" horn, 3" crystal). One single audio source (CD) played on Genelec versus JBL sounds different. Both of them are excellent speakers. For vocals, nothing beats the JBL. For instrumentals, the Genelec is extremely neutral ... I give it to you that the amplifiers etc all mostly output more or less the same audio waveform. The differences in the final sound are produced by the speakers. Thank you, TS

February 26th, 2004, 10:16 PM	#30
Keith Luken Major Player Join Date: Aug 2002 Posts: 200	Well I used the Sony MD for the gig and plugged right into their sound board. Let the MD record on LP4, had no choice it was to be unattanded for over 3 hours. Had to manual 1x import through my SB audigy2 and it sounds excellent. The only drawback so far is when I go to sync the audio to the video I can sync them perfectly at the begining of the video, but by about 45-50 minutes in there is obvious drift where they are a way out of sync. I guess I will have to break the event innto individual clips for each performance (about 3-5 minutes each) and sync each clip individually. I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this happen? Am I expecting too much from consumer grade equipment.