Computers VS HUs

[Black_Jesus 10+ year member]

ive never tried ma audio cards...

ive always stayed with audigy 2.. infact.. im not willing to even try anything else... its more than i could ask for.

 

[DoubleR 10+ year member]

Actually dude M Audio cards are really good. My friend records local bands on his computer through the sound card. Didnt even think of it but Audigy cards are still good.

 

[Bigrick31 10+ year member]

anyone know prices on Ma Audio

 

[-JB 10+ year member]

It is not MA Audio, its M-Audio.

There is some on newegg. Check the M-Audio site find out what you need and then see where you can find it cheapest //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

 

[Defiler 10+ year member]

If you are looking for music get a card with the VIA Vinyl-HT chipset. I have the Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1LT. Way better for music than Creative.

 

[THX 10+ year member]

Creative cards **** for music. They resample everything to 48kHz, which is not good for your 44.1kHz music. Some people can't hear the difference, but it's there and if you do A/B comparos you can also hear it. M-Audio has DACs that stomp Creative's. Most just associate Creative with quality because they have really high priced cards and many features that are great for gaming.

Anyway the most popular consumer M-Audio cards are the Revolution 7.1 and 5.1 (the 5.1 is newer and has more modern DACs). They feature the Envy24 chipset which can bypass Windows' kmixer (the element that resamples everything to 48kHz) with either ASIO or kernel streaming. Other cards with this chipset are the Chaintech-AV710 and Auditotrak Prodigy 7.1. The Revolution 5.1 though may be your best bet because of its price (Newegg).

More information than you wanted but it will at least put your mind at ease wondering if Creative makes a music lover's card.

 

[Defiler 10+ year member]

Creative cards **** for music. They resample everything to 48kHz, which is not good for your 44.1kHz music. Some people can't hear the difference, but it's there and if you do A/B comparos you can also hear it. M-Audio has DACs that stomp Creative's. Most just associate Creative with quality because they have really high priced cards and many features that are great for gaming.
Anyway the most popular consumer M-Audio cards are the Revolution 7.1 and 5.1 (the 5.1 is newer and has more modern DACs). They feature the Envy24 chipset which can bypass Windows' kmixer (the element that resamples everything to 48kHz) with either ASIO or kernel streaming. Other cards with this chipset are the Chaintech-AV710 and Auditotrak Prodigy 7.1. The Revolution 5.1 though may be your best bet because of its price (Newegg).

More information than you wanted but it will at least put your mind at ease wondering if Creative makes a music lover's card.

AMEN, BRUTHA!!!!

 

[jakl27 10+ year member]

rise from the grave!

well i know this topic is old but im going to install a carputer and here are my choices. what do you recomend.

well i have one set of components in front with a kicker kx350.2 and a re se 10" with a kicker kx600.1. no rear fill since its a single cab f-150.

now i have a few ideas but dont know what to do.

get a m audio pci car 5.1 and split the 1/8 jack for front and sub. what do i do since i dont have rear fill. is this enough preout power to my amps?

or use a soundblaster live 24bit i have on another computer then split its one line out jack to two rca's. then feed those rcas to a kicker kx2. which will convert to high pass rca and low pass rca. is this enough power to my amps?

well what would you do to sound the best. also im running without a head unit. (maybe run a hu for radio but regardless signal should be strong to the aux in a hu right?) thanks guys

 

[Defiler 10+ year member]

If you have to chose between the two cards you listed go with the M audio. If you can add a card to the list you have go with an AudioTrak Prodigy 7.1LT. Yes I know you are only doing 2.1 technically but the Prodigy has a way better DAC than either one of the cards listed. Also. I think you can do a 2.1 out put so you don't need to split the 1.8 jack out.

But to add something else. What I did in the past was get a half din pre amp/5 band EQ (Clarion) to get instant volume control and EQ settings. It also had a bass control on it as well. It took 2 sets of AUX inputs and 6 Ch. out with 7V each. Sounded very nice when I had it.

Good luck!

rise from the grave!
well i know this topic is old but im going to install a carputer and here are my choices. what do you recomend.

well i have one set of components in front with a kicker kx350.2 and a re se 10" with a kicker kx600.1. no rear fill since its a single cab f-150.

now i have a few ideas but dont know what to do.

get a m audio pci car 5.1 and split the 1/8 jack for front and sub. what do i do since i dont have rear fill. is this enough preout power to my amps?

or use a soundblaster live 24bit i have on another computer then split its one line out jack to two rca's. then feed those rcas to a kicker kx2. which will convert to high pass rca and low pass rca. is this enough power to my amps?

well what would you do to sound the best. also im running without a head unit. (maybe run a hu for radio but regardless signal should be strong to the aux in a hu right?) thanks guys

 

[jakl27 10+ year member]

k i checked out that card, would i need the prodigy or go with the mayas? 7.1 isnt a overkill? also ill need to split the jack regardless, it doesnt have rcas to go to an equalizer , line driver, etc.

 

[Defiler 10+ year member]

It's not the number of channels it supports it has to do with the chipset and DACs on the card. It doesn't matter if you use it in a 2.1 or 5.1 or 7.1 setup it the quality you want/get with the hardware.

 

[///M5 10+ year member]

Creative cards **** for music. They resample everything to 48kHz, which is not good for your 44.1kHz music. Some people can't hear the difference, but it's there and if you do A/B comparos you can also hear it. M-Audio has DACs that stomp Creative's. Most just associate Creative with quality because they have really high priced cards and many features that are great for gaming.
Anyway the most popular consumer M-Audio cards are the Revolution 7.1 and 5.1 (the 5.1 is newer and has more modern DACs). They feature the Envy24 chipset which can bypass Windows' kmixer (the element that resamples everything to 48kHz) with either ASIO or kernel streaming. Other cards with this chipset are the Chaintech-AV710 and Auditotrak Prodigy 7.1. The Revolution 5.1 though may be your best bet because of its price (Newegg).

More information than you wanted but it will at least put your mind at ease wondering if Creative makes a music lover's card.

If you only want 2 chn's get an E-MU 0404 or if you have the cash an E-MU 1212. The Audigy is crap (for music) and so is the Blaster live (again for music). THX's other recommendations are good to M-Audio Revo 5.1 (don't get the 7.1 as the 5.1 has a better analog output stage), the Audiotrak Prodigy, or if you are cheap and you can be here use the Chaintech AV-710 it is like $25 at Newegg. Beware with the Chaintech though, it only has 2 good D/A's and they are on the rear channels. Don't know why they used cheap ones elsewhere and Wolfson on the rears, but they did. Still IMO $100 for the E-MU 0404 is a great deal, $200 for the E-MU 1212 is even better and if you are cheap $25 on the Chaintech.

Oh, then do yourself a favor and rip all your music again, this time Lossless using Exact Audio Copy. As a reference, the D/A on the 1212 will rival $1000 HU's

 

[EdMuse 10+ year member]

...and i was listening to some mp3 from the conputer in my car. all the while thinking Hmm this sounds pretty clean. so i put a cd in my cars HU and listen to a song then put the same cd in the carputer and listen to it. now it did sound better in my pioneer 6500...

Hey, one thing nobody seems to have mentioned is that mp3 files, by nature, don't sound as good as CDs. Remember that the reason you can fit so many mp3 files on a CD is that they are compressed. Now, some methods of compression are better than others, and as far as quality vs. file size goes, mp3 is pretty ****ed good. But any compressed file, be it audio, video or graphics, will not decompress at as good quality as an uncompressed file.

So, before you go gutting your computer, make sure you're comparing apples to apples, here (and I don't mean the OS you're running). Toss a wav or aiff file on the computer, and compare that to the CD. Then, adjust the equipment from there.

-EdM.

 

[amartin_72]

I was also considering a carputer but does anyone know if the HD will skip from daily driving conditions or will it be fine?

 

[lubetek 10+ year member]

I've been planning this for awhile now. I have been building custom pc's for years now and I decided recently i would put a mini pc in my car (after I'm done building my system)

I will use a 15" touch screen LCD mounted under my hu and angled out a bit for easy access. this way a keyboard is not needed at all nor a mouse. Winxp has a built in keyboard that will pop up on the screen.

If your hu has a aux input then you can just hook your sound card up to it via rca interconnect cable (and all the top end sound cards either have composit, component, optical and fire wire/USB ports)

I just haven't decided if I want the pc mounted in the trunk or fabbed in under my dash. Maybe under the center of the dash console.