Installing Audiophile 2496?

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Inspired

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I thought installing my new Audiophile 2496 soundcard was going to be a simple task of just pulling the old Creative Labs 16bit out, and putting in the new Audiophile, but...

There are two wires running from the side of the Creative Labs soundcard. One is CD In that goes to the CD Rom, the other is Aux In that goes to the CD burner. The new Audiophile does not have any place for these two wires to go.

What do I do?

Does the software that came with the Audiophile replace these wires, or what?
 
The Audiophile does not have a place for these wires. I have tried myself on hooking the CD cable from the spot on my motherboard (my motherboard has a connector for this) to the CDROM but it looks to me that in order to hear music when I play an audio CD in the CDROM I'd have to enable onboard sound (which I have disabled as I'm using the Audiophile). So basically I can't play audio CD's in my machine unless someone else has a suggestion. It's possible you might have a place on your motherboard for these wires but you might have to have onboard sound (assuming your board has it) enabled in order to hear audio CD's.
 
If you have the open slots, leave the old card in.
You should be able to run them both, and just use the 2496 for audio apps.


Am I wrong in this anyone? I have all Intel P4 with the soundcard as part of the motherboard, so maybe this is different for me, nevertheless I am running my 1010 along with the Soundmax, no problems.

With a program like Winamp though, you can play CD's thru the 2496.:)
 
i love my audiophile.

The only way i could listen to CD audio however was with the latest version of Windows Media Player. I guess it actually dedicates a bit of CPU for streaming the CD data to the sound card. It's a shame the audiophile didn't come with the internal analog connector for CD-ROM audio, but .. in the end, it's a recording sound card. I can't hold it over midiman's head.
 
You can certainly keep the old soundcard (or onboard sound device) when you install the Audiophile, but there's a fair chance there will be some troubles with IRQs and such and you might have to mess around a little to get them to coexist happily.

And as tvaillan noted, you can play CDs using Windows Media Player and some other players such as Winamp. They will play the CDs by reading the data straight off the disk rather than just channeling the analog output of the CD-ROM drive to the outputs. This is probably better anyway since you'll use the Audiophile's converters to turn the signal back to analog rather than the cheapy one in the CD-ROM drive.
 
Leaving the old card in and putting the Audiophile in the next emptly slot is exactly what I was considering doing last night, but I was worried whether this would affect performance in any way. (Playback or Recording) I was hoping for 24 bit throughout my entire system, but I guess that's not going to happen. I'll go ahead and give this dual soundcard idea a try tonight.

I'm going to get an e-mail off to M-Audio just to see what they'll say. I'll let you guys know if they reveal some kind of revelation to me...
 
I cant remember how to get there now, but when I was using the audiophile with XP {provided you use XP} there was a check box in the properties you could check or enable that allowed the audiophile to play system sounds and CD's. I suppose it routed through the motherboard or something. It worked just fine.
 
Basslord1124 mentioned running the Audiophile to the motherboard, too. I'll look into that option. I am using XP so I'll see what I can find out about that CD playback feature.

If I end up using both soundcards, is it safe to run one set of speakers to one soundcard, and another set to the other soundcard? This may be a stupid question.

Also, how do you guys go about hooking a 1/4" guitar cable into the Audiophile. I know I'll need an adapter, but which one (stereo, mono, etc.) , and which RCA input do you use on the card?
 
You will be safe to use the outputs on one card for PC speakers and the audiophile for monitors or whatever your using.
You will need a 1/4" to RCA adapter. The audiophile has two RCA stereo inputs L/R
 
OK, thanks.

My experience with the Audiophile is really turning out to be very frustrating. I was hoping for a simple soundcard swap. The Audiophile is supposed to be one of the best 24-bit cards out there, and I can't even install the damn thing. XP won't recognize it when I go through the installation process. I'm still waiting to hear back from M-Audio.
 
Inspired said:
OK, thanks.

My experience with the Audiophile is really turning out to be very frustrating. I was hoping for a simple soundcard swap. The Audiophile is supposed to be one of the best 24-bit cards out there, and I can't even install the damn thing. XP won't recognize it when I go through the installation process. I'm still waiting to hear back from M-Audio.
Click to expand...
Thats odd...when I installed mine with XP, it went without a hitch.
In fact, it was almost too easy. Now I recently sold it to a recording buddy of mine and he uses 98se....now that was a bitch. Took about an hour to get it right.
 
Stealthtech said:
Thats odd...when I installed mine with XP, it went without a hitch.
In fact, it was almost too easy. Now I recently sold it to a recording buddy of mine and he uses 98se....now that was a bitch. Took about an hour to get it right.
Click to expand...

hey ST,

im on the verge of ordering this card and i use 98se...can you give me some detail on the problems your friend had? thanks..
 
If you want the best situation for the audiophile, use Windows 2000 pro.


98SE's MME driver aren't the best choice.

You prolly want to take advantage of the WDM or ASIO type of drivers and from what i heard, Win2000 is best for that.

Super stable at my place. Joy to work with. Never a pop.

Tristan
 
.. oh yeah , the most important part.

It installs flawlessly on windows 2000.

The buffer size seting in the audiphile's control panel is set to 384 samples by default upon installation. I haven't had to change it.

I did own win98SE at one point and installed the card on that 'operating system'. It wasn't very plesant. The drivers wheren't very good (too high level) and introduced much delay.

NOTE: You may want to put the sample buffer down a whole lot if you're doing midi stuff .. basically anything that deals with short samples. When recording normally (analog out from keyboard, analog out from guitar rig ..etc) 384 and 512 are the best settings.
 
CDT-sHaG said:
hey ST,

im on the verge of ordering this card and i use 98se...can you give me some detail on the problems your friend had? thanks..
Click to expand...
To be honest, I cant quote the exact description because we went thru so many different try's to get it to work. It wasn't the audiophile, it was 98se. It had a difficult time finding the drivers even though it was right in its face. It finally came around after about 15 tries. When you get the disc you need to find the driver specifically for 98se and specify the location when windows is searching for it.
Honestly, do yourself a favor and upgrade to 2k or XP if you got the dough. Others may argue the fact but XP is far better than 98 ever was.
 
If I am not mistaken, there is an option in both Windows Xp and 98 that allows you to send CD audio digitally, through the IDE bus, in place of using the little analog cable. Try going into Control Panel / System / Device manager. Select the properties for the Cd or DVD drive and look for a check box "enable digital audio". I think that will allow playback through your 2496.

From what I have seen on this board the 2496 can be a finicky creature to install. On my XP system I had quite a tussle getting my 2496 to play nice with my ATI All-In-Wonder card. But after some trouble shooting they are now working OK.

One thing about the 2496 - if you are going to try re-installing the drivers, be sure to un-install the old ones first. You can download a un-installer tool from M-Audio just for that purpose.
 
Hey..looking at getting this card, and not sure about its I/O's. I've only ever had a gaming card so not use to this. I notice it has 4 rca's im guessing are 2 in 2 out. So your mixer just goes straight to these and out right? IS there a headphones jack so when im playing games or listening to music? Or do i just have to listen to everything from the mixer? Oh and they main thing, do they have any issues with AMD Athlons? Im using an Epox 8k3a 333 mother board. THanks!
 
I have no specific Audiophile information to offer here, however my Terratec EWX 24/96 does have a connector for a CD-ROM. It connects to the digital-audio out on my LG CD-ROM player.

But there is a downside (isn't there always?). I have to enable a jumper on the audiocard to route the CD player through the Terratec, which in turn disables the optical connector on the card.

RWhite's solution is the way to go though. Maybe I should try that with my Terratec and see what happens. Then maybe I'll have the best solution too. :)

--
BluesMeister
 
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