What is the noise floor on your Delta?

canada-paul

New member
Thinking about getting a Delta 44 or an Audiophile 2496 as an upgrade to my SBLive. After recording a blank track on my SBLive with nothing plugged into the line-in, I get between -72 and -63 (usually closer to -63dB) as a noise floor. Of course this is completely useless as soon as you start to compress something like vocals, as you can hear the compressor breathing quite badly.

Those of you with Delta's, what kind of noise floor do you get when you record a blank track with nothing plugged in? Have you got a sec to try it for me? :)

Thanks
 
just a quickie on the analog inputs of the Audiophile gave me a -83db floor.....

i get around -60db with a Marshall MXLv67G plugged into a Joe Meek VC3Q with enuff gain to get a vocal to -5db in a very acoustically challenged room.......
 
Audiomark tests on my SBLive

I seem to be replying to my own posts here, but what the hell, maybe this is enlightening someone else as much as me.

Here are the results of a RightMark Audio Analyzer test I ran lats night on my SBLive. I had really bad 'inter-channel leakage', which I assume to mean that what was supposed to be coming through the left channel was bleeding into the right, and vice versa. I had never noticed this before, but I changed the cable from line in to line out and had the same result, so it must be an internal problem in the soundcard.

Here is a screen shot of the setup showing Windows mixer levels and warning about inter-channel leakage:

http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~pjhollow/AudioAnalyzersetup.jpg

Here are the results:
Frequency response (from 40 Hz to 15 kHz), dB: +4.11, -26.14 Very poor
Noise level, dB (A): -82.5 Good
Dynamic range, dB (A): 80.7 Good
THD, %: 0.012 Good
IMD, %: 0.389 Average
Stereo crosstalk, dB: -12.8 Very poor

(I would post the HTML report but there's a space in the filename and I can't figure out how to link it properly... or for that matter fix the hyperlinks)
 
Your results are very different and much poorer than the 'official' test results on the RMAA website. Either your sblive is stuffed or you did something wrong when testing (unless the old RMAA results are that much different to the latest version).

http://audio.rightmark.org/results.html

ps try testing the rear outputs as well. They should measure a lot better.
 
Yeah I noticed that. I did some recording immediately afterwards (some guitar in Sonar) and I didn't notice it sounding any worse than normal. I've never noticed significant crosstalk between channels, but honestly I can't say I've ever really listened for it.

My concern when buying a new card is that I make the right decision. I want to make sure that when I plug in the new card and run a test like this again I can see (and hear) a significant enough difference to warrant the price, and I end up with enough of an improvement above and beyond what I need that as my ears learn I find new things to appreciate about the card.

But if my SBLive is really as bad as the test indicates, this shouldn't be difficult.

About the rear levels, I couldn't get them to turn on... how do you do it?
 
I set my sblive to 4 speaker mode in the audiohq. That usually means the rears replicate the fronts. You should use your rear outputs to connect to your speakers.

I have an sblive. When I upgraded to an Echo Mia, the difference was not subtle. An audiophile or delta 44 has slightly worse measured sound quality than a Mia but still should be an obvious improvement on an sblive. Of course you need to have speakers that can show the difference. You probably cant tell with pc speakers.
 
I just checked out the Mia last night at a couple online dealers here in Canada. The price is right at $299, still cheaper than a Delta44, and from the Audio Analyzer tests it looks like I can't go wrong.

As far as my speakers go, I've got the line out of the soundblaster routed into Ch2/3 of my mixer, then I'm monitoring through headphones. But of course for the test I had to unplug all that and just run a wire from line in to line out.

I'll try the rear outs tonight on the soundblaster, thanks for the tip.
 
You're welcome. The Mia is a great card and Echo has very good driver support. Make sure you check with Echo that that your motherboard is compatible (its on their website and you can email them). Unlike M-Audio, Echo make it state what motherboards recommend or not to work with their soundcards. I applaud them (and RME) for this. Other companies just encourage you to buy their soundcards and find out through trial and error if they work with your computer.

Just note (in case you didnt know) that like the audiophile, the mia has 2 analog i/o and 2 digital i/o. The delta 44 has 4 analog i/o and no digital i/o. My apologies if I am stating the obvious. Good luck with your upgrade.
 
alfalfa said:
Your results are very different and much poorer than the 'official' test results on the RMAA website.
That's often the case when people test their own cards with RMAA. They get poorer results than the "lab test". There's a big thread at the SOS-forum. I can see if I can dig that up...
 
The thread is here, but you should all know that it was started to prove that this caracter XG's soundcard (bought for £5.28) wasn't that excellent that he thought it was... ;)
 
When my Delta is not plugged into anything the noise floor is around -88dB. I even recorded it and boosted the signal a bunch and then normalized what I found.

Here's the .mp3:
 

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I tore up the old linoleum on my Delta 66's noise floor and replaced it with WilsonArt -- kinda like Pergo...

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Seriously, it's about -85dB according to CoolEdit 2000...
 
Actually I never even noticed the Delta 44 didn't have any digital I/O, thanks for pointing that out. That pretty much knocks it off my list, as I was hoping to pick up a POD (I could save alot of coin buying the 2.0 instead of the XT) or a Digitech Genesis 3 guitar multi-effects unit (also looking at Johnson J-Station), then running its digital out into the soundcard, completely avoiding the analog realm altogether.

I tried doing the RMAA loop-back test last night using the rear outs on my sounblaster like you had suggested, but couldn't get them to output anything. I tried every one of the 12 or so different speaker configurations that you can pick from in the Audio HQ, but not one was called '4 speaker'. There were a couple at the bottom that kinda sounded like they might take advantage of rear speakers, I think one was called Quad Sound and another was called Surround or something.

On a different note, anyone know what the difference is between an RCA-style S/PDIF port and a co-axial one? Is it important to make sure the components you wish to connect via the S/PDIF ports have the same end styles, or are RCA-to-coax adapter cables pretty much the norm? The reason I ask is that the Digitech Genesis 3 multi-effects processor features an RCA S/PDIF, as does the Audiophile 2496, whereas the Echo Mia has the co-ax style.

alfalfa said:
You're welcome. The Mia is a great card and Echo has very good driver support. Make sure you check with Echo that that your motherboard is compatible (its on their website and you can email them). Unlike M-Audio, Echo make it state what motherboards recommend or not to work with their soundcards. I applaud them (and RME) for this. Other companies just encourage you to buy their soundcards and find out through trial and error if they work with your computer.

Just note (in case you didnt know) that like the audiophile, the mia has 2 analog i/o and 2 digital i/o. The delta 44 has 4 analog i/o and no digital i/o. My apologies if I am stating the obvious. Good luck with your upgrade.
 
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canada-paul said:
On a different note, anyone know what the difference is between an RCA-style S/PDIF port and a co-axial one

The ones with the RCA ends are the co-axial ones!

The other kind(s) are optical- different type of cable altogether, and AES/EBU a "pro" format with XLR ends made for longer runs.
 
moskus said:
The thread is here, but you should all know that it was started to prove that this caracter XG's soundcard (bought for £5.28) wasn't that excellent that he thought it was... ;)

I read through that up to where he did his test to find out how shitty the card was and still was definding it.

LMAO...that was hilarious. :D
 
Interesting how different-looking the noise floor is on different folk's systems. Shackrock's looks a little like it has some periodic variation overlaid on it; mine looks extremely horizontal and rectangular with some very regular short spikes standing up...
 
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