EMU 1820 Is there a catch?

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thomas1831

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I have been thinking about purchasing the EMU 1820 audio card. I have been hearing nothing but good things about this card. But im still a little unsure about it because its so new. Is there any emu 1820m/1820 users that could shed some light on this card and help me make a decision?.

Thank You
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There are catches.

The WDM drivers SUCK. Simple as that. The ASIO drivers are great, but things like Sonar, you can't use the 1820 with other sound cards simultaneously because of ASIO implementation. Hopefully this situation will change with newer drivers.

The drivers don't support multi-card yet. They say that there will be support in another driver revision, but who knows how far out that is...

You don't have the full input and outputs when you move up to 96 and 192 khz.

And...that's what I can see right now. Converters are great, ASIO drivers are rock solid, pres sound great... it's an incredible sound card that holds it own against Aardvark and MOTU and all that. Much better than my experience with my old Q10 and Delta.
 
Sklathill said:
You don't have the full input and outputs when you move up to 96 and 192 khz.
Click to expand...
But that's a restriction of the ADAT standard, not so much a limitation of the 1820 itself. At 96kHz you just can't squeeze more than 4 channels through an ADAT connection (192kHz -> 2 channels)
 
Not just the ADAT. You're sacrificing the analog line inputs and outputs as well. (from 8 to 4 analog inputs at 192 khz, for example. Or losing 4 analog ins at 96 khz if you want 4 smux'd adat ins. You keep you analog ins if you totally disable the adat in...)
 
Couldn't find that information on the emu.com site but if it's true I happily stand corrected
 
christiaan said:
Couldn't find that information on the emu.com site but if it's true I happily stand corrected
Click to expand...
Happy? :) I don't see what there is to be happy about. :) In any case, this comes directly from the manual.
 
Sklathill,

Quote:
-
There are catches.
The WDM drivers SUCK. Simple as that. The ASIO drivers are great, but things like Sonar, you can't use the 1820 with other sound cards simultaneously because of ASIO implementation. Hopefully this situation will change with newer drivers.
---------------------------------------------------------------

Not quite so, many owners of 1820, use Audigy without no
problems, even Emu has tested the same as ready to go.

My friend managed to have MBO's sound + MAYA44 MKII
(4 I/O) PCI card, all work in harmony,some know-how was
needed, but no problem at all for now.

It is really up to your own devices and know-how.
 
When I say the WDM drivers suck, I meant that they suck. :) It actually coexists nicely with my onboard sound, but in something like Sonar, the WDM drivers are such that they don't even allow more than a pair of inputs, and in the case of Sonar, you have to be running WDM if you want to use multiple sound cards simultaneously in a Sonar session.

Trust me when I say that in Sonar, Emu + WDM sucks, and WDM is necessary for multiple card usage in Sonar.
 
This really only depends how do you approach to dealing with ASIO.

WDM with Emu DAS it's not as low latency as ASIO2 implementation but it works well and as expected for general purpose Windows audio.

Emu can’t make homework for other brands drivers.

Sonar doesn’t work good, (lazy software implementation) take any Cubase, or why nor the one you received with you Emu software (Cubase VST) no problem with Cubase with any combination of
cards. Some editors also are ASIO blind (Sound Forge) so does that mean nothing can be done,
certainly not. Use Wavelab as editor. No problems there.

Steinberg is not lazy to implement Asio ,some others are.
 
I like my Sonar 3 better than Cubase VST 5, thank you. It's basically 4 year old software with some extra options to run at 192 khz. (I know, I was a former Cubase 5 user.) I like my Sonar 3 and prefer the UI to Cubase SX. Simple as that.

When I say the WDM drivers suck, I mean they SUCK. Either MME or WDM, regardless how you setup the patchmix DSP, you only see a single pair for input and 4 ouput pairs. I don't see my ADAT ins and outs either, when working with WDM.

The WDM drivers SUCK.

I use Sound Forge, BTW, and it sounds find. Quality of sound output isn't a problem. It's WDM, MME, Windows not having access to the whole card.

(I can't believe I'm arguing about how bad my own sound card's drivers are.)

Anthony: Have you actually used an E-mu card?
 
Sklathill said:
Happy? :) I don't see what there is to be happy about. :) In any case, this comes directly from the manual.
Click to expand...
I just don't mind to admit that I'm wrong :)
Anyway, the link on the Emu site to the manuals didn't work. I tried to look there. Not nice.
 
Sklathill,

quote: Anthony: Have you actually used an E-mu card?
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Indeed.

X-studio (1820m) first series that came in Europe.

I’m terribly short with time these days so only made some preliminary battery of test to see how good converters really are. I was 4 years away from studio / my machines and just wanted some simple as possible just compose setup 2 x Emu IV and 1820m.

Over the years rotated from digital to analog, in recent years sound of SSL and Neve made me hate sound of my now late Pro Tools. I said to myself you can’t deny simplicity of digital domain and in range value of this E-mu product I think they did fantastic job, as I said in Emu forums, "same Pro Tools converters", promo is really not a mere declaration, really sounds fantastic considering the cost and value.
 
Quote:
It's WDM, MME, Windows not having access to the whole card.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ASIO is presented (now 2.0) as open and dedicated source to communicate with audio hardware better then others.

MS (w2&Xp) just didn’t see that as priority, also some hardware and software makers are somewhat dissonant in deciding to implement compatibility and that leaves with this present deficiency with WDM and MME.

Many developers are now promising better driver integration with everyone-able-to-read-everyone environment, sadly, this is all as penalty to people that have purchased cards and solution that are really not finished products, I consider drivers as second nature of those cards, after all, it is essence that speaks with the same hardware.
 
I personally don't think you're saying much. :)

Some people have solid WDM drivers that do everything the ASIO drivers do and better. M-Audio falls into this category in my experience with Delta cards in a variety of systems. Generally lower latency. (There was the fiasco with subsequent channel lag, but let's ignore that. :) The later drivers were quite good.)

Then there are guys that provide both, and depending on the system it's on, either WDM or ASIO will be the right solution. I recently setup an Aardvark Q10 on a school system and no matter how I configured the Dell I was installing it on, WDM just didn't sound good. And there was my friend's AMD system where Sonar and ASIO just didn't play nicely, and running it with aWDM drivers was just dandy.

And there are things like Emu where the ASIO drivers are clearly the focus and the WDM drivers are afterthoughts.

From what you say, the inferiority of the WDM drivers in the Emu is due to inherent flaws in the WDM driver model itself... when this is not the case as many other sound card manufacturers have no problem making good, even superior WDM drivers. This is quite clearly E-mu's fault in developing the drivers that their cards currently ship with.
 
Sklathill,

Omnium rerum principia parva sunt.

You are opening debate supplementing both question and answers, leaving no need for me to shape any substance. If you read more patiently second portion of my second reply then there is even common ground of your last observation reflecting synergy between different drivers.

Point is this…> it will take some time for many cards to act open as some you mentioned being able for smooth recognition under any driver/program environment. <

Since 1976., when consumer and pro sector entered in first format war it became clear every brand would always push their solutions as priority. It started with Akio Morita (Sony) and ,Shuizo Takano Victor (JVC) and it is never to be finished.

On smaller scale in domain of software drivers, It would be safe to assume that earlier players should be more observing and complete then those of later date.

Therefore,ASIO is relatively new compared to others,and
many far more experienced developers (then you and me) consider the same to be superior then others.

Forgive my freedom to say so, but I think one of the early adopters of VLSI (EMU) are more then competent to be taken seriously if the say so, despite of your flying comments toward ASIO.

It is MS Win. fault for not making more flexible implementation of WDM and MME support so that
later solutions would enter with decent results. Asio has no problems on my MAC,and announced X-studio for Mac wont ever have this problems. Guess what, there is no worm holes as much as in Win as well. :)

I leave you to grasp whose fault is this really after all.

Over and out.
 
Last edited:
Let's keep this simple.

I have no beef with ASIO.

Other manufacturers make fine WDM drivers.

E-mu can make better WDM drivers, and they've already stated that such is in the pipeline.

(thomas: if you're still reading, Emu recently put out update 1.02, making 2 updates in the last two months. That's good, and gives me hope for better WDM drivers soon...)

Oh, and one more limitation which can be very important. E-mu will likely not make GSIF drivers ever, thanks to their Emulator X. If you use Gigastudio or see yourself using GS in the future, you're gonig to need another card.

I'm afraid if I keep on going with this thread I'll say something that I'll regret, so this is my last post.
 
Sklathill,

quote:

I'm afraid if I keep on going with this thread I'll say something that I'll regret, so this is my last post.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why on earth would you feel like that?

Nature of this forums is to share views and information, we can’t all agree on everything and it doesn’t matter, it is all just a moment in time. There is no 1st place.

Relax.
 
I have decided to go with the 1820. The cost is great, it has all the features i want and i plan on using the bundled software (Cubase Vst) for awhile and later upgrade to SX. Im just using the one card in my system (dedicated recording computer) so I don't think the WDM problem will affect me. If i am completly wrong please let me know? Thanks!!
 
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