E-mu's New 0404 Sound Card

  • Thread starter Thread starter Grigorios
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Grigorios

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So, what do all of you make of E-mu's latest release:

http://www.digit-life.com/news.html?105770

I've seen this unit, though with 1/4 jacks instead of RCA jacks.

Simply a modified Audigy 2 designed to work with E-mu's PatchMix Mixer??? Maybe, but the specs seem pretty impressive for the proposed price.
 
Decent, but too high in price. Too close to the 1212M selling point to be much of a factor, IMHO. Doesn't have the outputs or the drivers to make it part of a decent home theater setup (competition here is stuff like the Revolution 7.1, and even the M-Audio Delta Audiophile can bass through S/PDIF signal bit perfect for decoding, which the E-mu can't...) and doesn't have the sheer amount of options and better quality of the 1212M that is already at a good price.
 
Hey Skat-

Thanks for this and the other reply. I found the EMU 0404 card for $99 online at AMS (link below). How would this effect/change your position on its price point. To me, with my needs of only limited I/O (1-2, not 10-12), balanced & midi I/O, and good quality sound (decent ADA converters), this card looks like a steal.



http://www.americanmusical.com/item--i-EMU-8803.html
 
HUH...well, I guess I'm now looking at it as a little bit better than the Audiophile, thanks to the balanced connectors. (The pic that I saw with the Japanese press release showed RCAs...)

With the balanced IO, I'm thinking it might not be a bad purcahse, but I'm still thinking the jump in quality for 100 dollars to the 1212M is well worth it, and I'm still worried about driver immaturity, specifically lack of multi-card...
 
I didn't dig too deep into the technical specs, but isn't the 0404 card based on the same AD converters as the 1212M? Or, is the lack of the "M" on the 0404 designating lower-quality (but not bad) converters a la 1820 (vs. 1820M).

The SNR specs looked decent, so I assumed this meant this card was similar in sound quality to the 1212M, but just lacking the extra I/O.
 
The specs are decent, but it doesn't use the new AKM converters of the M series...it uses the Cirrus Logic converters used in the 1820 (non-m)
 
Sklathill said:
HUH...well, I guess I'm now looking at it as a little bit better than the Audiophile, thanks to the balanced connectors. (The pic that I saw with the Japanese press release showed RCAs...)

With the balanced IO, I'm thinking it might not be a bad purcahse, but I'm still thinking the jump in quality for 100 dollars to the 1212M is well worth it, and I'm still worried about driver immaturity, specifically lack of multi-card...
Click to expand...

Man, I can't belive how much people get caught up on balanced connectors. Its not like it magically makes everything sound better.

If you aren't running long cables, its a total non-issue whether you have balanced connections or not.
 
I personally have seen a big difference between using balanced and unbalanced. between my XV-3080 and my E-mu, I'm actually seeing the noise floor hit the 90s. With my Audiophile and with fairly high-grade stereo RCA cable with RCA to 1/4" connectors to the synth, I saw the noise floor around -65 dbfs.

For me and my electrically noisy environment, balanced connections really was magic.

Edit: Forgot to note that all my synths are sitting around here at 6 feet of cable away...
 
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