I've got it down to three soundcards...help me make it one!

amonte

amonte

New member
I'm in the process of putting together a very small and limited recording setup, and I've been putting off making my final decision on a sound card for a while now.

The three contenders are as follows the M-Audio Delta 44 or 66, the Emu 1212M and the Echo Mia. All of these have balanced inputs and outputs as well as digital inputs and outputs (except the 44). The Mia and the Emu also have MIDI I/O which was something that I'd like to have - but without a doubt the item that I am most concerned about is the latency when recording. Are any of these cards known to have latency issues? Would one work better than another?

Any opinions would be appreciated.
 
Do you need the ADAT of the Emu card? If you do I guess out of those three that is your only option. The M-Audio 1010LT also fits in your budget, yes they are not balanced in out, but are you running 50ft of cables from your mixer/pres to the sound card? If not then it will not matter, heck it might not even matter at 100foot. Also check out muscians friend they are giving away a pair of mxl 990 mics, will you find a use for those? You could always sell the pair for $100. Do you need midi? Will you want midi? Its nice to have it on the sound card, but yes you can get midi i/o from usb devices. If you get down to the delta 44 or 66, get the 66, digital in/out is almost a must these days, more pre-amps have digital outs, multi effect boxes have digital in/out, and being limited to just four inputs of the 44 is well limiting in my mind, but then maybe you only need two inputs??? Or even one input???
 
Hey SRR, thanks for the input!

Don't have a need for the ADAT at all and I don't see having a need for it in the future.

At this point, I will have a need for at least 2 inputs at once. I'm sure down the line I will have a need for more, so in that regard, the the 1010LT could probably be useful to me for a longer stretch of time. I don't know, I guess something always bothered me about those RCA jacks...I guess I could always build a small breakout box for if I really wanted to plug a 1/4 jack into something. :rolleyes:

I am sure I can find a use for the mics...but is there a noticeable loss (or improvement?) in sound quality between the 1010LT and some of the other cards?
 
I don't know if there would be much difference at this price level. I have only cheap sound cards and a 1010lt to compare, the 1010lt was easily a step up in performance, going beyond this level you may need to get to $1000 converters/sound card to have the same "easily step up" effect. That of course is just conjector on my part, someone with more experience may chime in tell me I have it all wrong.......and I would be ok with that...... :D

Good luck in your search.
 
i have no experiance with the others, but i do have the delta 66.........and it rocks. great soundcard if you use it with ASIO, and the in/outs are good. even though there are only 4 ins, and 4 outs which are all 1/4in plugs........it does the job well. i run my anolog mixer (which has 1/4 in outs) straight into it.........so the whole "in/out" feature wasnt a selling point for me. but the card itself, is excellent. Great drivers, great latency ( i have mine set at 2.5ms latency.....and it works smooth), and a all-around clear winner in my book.
 
Well the Delta 1010 doesn"t use RCA Jacks it uses 1/4 TS Jacks....I personally have a Delta 44 and I love it, Zero Latency problems and Zero Latency Direct monitoring and it has Good Converters, I just wish I had more Inputs But I guess I could get another Delta Card as they do play well together.....


Cheers
 
Minion said:
Well the Delta 1010 doesn"t use RCA Jacks it uses 1/4 TS Jacks....I personally have a Delta 44 and I love it, Zero Latency problems and Zero Latency Direct monitoring and it has Good Converters, I just wish I had more Inputs But I guess I could get another Delta Card as they do play well together.....


Cheers
Click to expand...

yes...well said......these delat cards work great together if your Computer has multiple available card slots. Use 2 of em together....and have a BUNCH of ins/outs!
 
The Delta 44 and 66 are essentially the same, the difference being the addition of Digital I/O with the 66. The 1010LT is a great value for the amount of I/O it has, but it is a sonic step down from the 44 and 66, with lesser quality converters, and un-balanced I/O. I have a Delta 66, and I have a much more expensive Lynx L-22 for my 2 gold channels and for monitoring. The highly regarded Lynx II stuff is awesome, but really, in comparison, the Delta 66 sounds quite good.
 
Minion said:
Well the Delta 1010 doesn"t use RCA Jacks it uses 1/4 TS Jacks....I personally have a Delta 44 and I love it, Zero Latency problems and Zero Latency Direct monitoring and it has Good Converters, I just wish I had more Inputs But I guess I could get another Delta Card as they do play well together.....


Cheers
Click to expand...

We were talking about the 1010LT which does have RCA's.
 
Would the 1010LT have the same low latency as the 44/66?

Robert, the 1010LT is a step down in quality from the 44/66 sound wise? I thought I had read that before, but I never knew if it was a statement backed by fact or by opinion.
 
1010LT

frequency response: 22Hz-22kHz, -0.2,-0.4dB @48kHz
22Hz-40kHz, -0.2,-0.7db @96kHz
dynamic range: 101.5dB (D/A) (A-weighted)
99.6dB (A/D) (A-weighted)
THD: < 0.002% (A/D and D/A)
size/weight: 5-1/8” x 7/8” x 5-3/8”; 0.25 lbs.





Delta 66

frequency response: 48kHz sample rate
input: +/-0.3 dB, 22Hz to 22kHz
output: +/-0.2 dB, 22Hz to 22kHz
96kHz sample rate:
input: +/-0.4 dB, 22Hz to 40kHz
output: +/-0.3 dB, 22Hz to 40kHz
dynamic range: 103dB (A-weighted) (D/A)
99dB (A-weighted) (A/D)
THD: < 0.002% (D/A)
0.0023% (A/D)
size/weight: 5-1/8” x 7/8” x 5-3/8”; 0.8 lbs.



To me again its a wash, ya those are just specs and not listening tests, but again you really aren't gonna be able to tell the difference at this price level from one to the other. They are all great compared to what we had 7 years ago.
 
Oh ya on the latency part, since the whole Delta series uses the same drivers for the 44, 66, 1010lt, 1010, etc. the latency should be the same too. BTW, you can use upto four of those in any combination (in theory atleast) because the drivers have four slots for cards, just make sure your PC has four PCI slots. That way you will have possibilty of 32 analog ins and outs, with 4 stereo digital ins and outs all at the same time using the 1010/LT. Now if they only they had a delta ADAT card.....the series would be complete.
 
I know its not on the list, but I just installed a firepod from presonus at a clients place.

I had my doubts but this card does lower latency at less CPU than I gcan get out of my RME's!

Pretty badass...now I gotta stay up and tweak my PC to get my RME there
 
I used to have a delta 44. Great card. That or the LT would be good. The 44 doesn't do midi, but that's not a biggie. Most controllers etc. now do midi via usb
 
Another vote for the 44. It is a very simple 4-in, 4-out soundcard. No mediocre pres, no MIDI (I don't do MIDI), not headphone out, no dials/knobs/buttons/blinking lights, just really good for the money AD and DA converters.
 
Thanks for the great replies, guys...

SRR, thank you for the spec breakdown on the cards. I appreciate it.

pipelineaudio, I was looking at the Firepod originally, but money is extremely tight right now, so I'm putting a firm ceiling of $200 on this purchase.

I suppose the MIDI isn't a big deal because I can always get something cheap to cover it.

gordone, I think that's what attracts me to it - just a nice basic feature set.
 
Whatever card you decide on, make absolutely sure it doesn't have issues with your computer first. Go to the manufacturer's website and check the FAQ's for things about chipset and processor anomallies.

The first multi card I ever brought home was a Lexicon, and after three days of trying to make it work, I "discovered" it didn't like Amd processors or Via chipsets at all.

If you've ever researched the firewire IO options, many of them expressly require the Texas Instruments chipset to operate properly.

The Echo Mia also demands Pentium processors.

All I'm saying is....look out for all the pitfalls before your decide which card is right for you, and good luck!
 
Mike, that's very good advice and something I had not thought of. I will definately look into it.

For the record, I am running on a Dell Dimension 2350 machine, 1.79 GhZ P4 with 512M RAM.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top