MAudio Audiophile 2496

  • Thread starter Thread starter Shaky Tee
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Just a heads up on the 24/96.

First, its a great starting out card. Good sound but not very 3 dimensional. Another item is that it has a midrange emphasis which can catch you off guard on your mixes. This means that volume wise you will over compensate your low and high end and under compensate your midrange which you will notice when you take your mixes to car or house stereos.

Once you learn your way around the EQ profile of the card your mixes will be more transferable. I used one for over 3 years and was very pleased with the performance. If you get a preamp with SPDIF out you can use all 4 available channels on the card. As pointed out, two analog and 2 SPDIF channels gives you 4 simultaneous tracks.

Not sure if they still provide Giga 24 in the package but it is a nice peice of software for free.
 
Middleman - "midrange emphasis"?

I've run RMAA tests on my AP 2496, and it's as flat as a pancake. Don't take my word for it...

http://forum.rightmark.org/topic.cgi?id=4:178

I can't post the exact link to the results - this BBS won't let me because the url includes the letters k,i,k and e!
Someone paranoid!

It loses out on crosstalk and dynamic range compared to more expensive cards, but it's frequency response far exceeds anything else in the recording chain - including the most expensive speakers you could use (come to that, so does the much maligned Audigy). In any case, the acoustics of most home studios would make a joke of anything with a flat response.
 
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I have over 1000 hours on the card and trust me, there is a midrange emphasis, at least on the card I was using. And it's not my monitors because when I changed over to the Lynx II it was gone and translation problems are less than 10%. A straight mix, when taken to the car, was always under compensated in the midrange because I was taking down the mix in that area because of the sound coming out of the speakers. I started putting compensating EQ on the Master buss to reduce the problem and after that things worked OK.

The driver may be the issue here and not the actual electronics of the card. The loopback test does not follow the path of a driver to sequencing software which could also be a factor. When I changed soundcards the output and connections to my patchbay remained the same, the monitors remained the same, the only variables were the card and the drivers. Also, the version of Sonar remained the same. Once again, it could have been my particular card because I did not benchtest it. This would speak to quality control however.

Sorry to disagree but the ears don't lie.
 
Middleman said:
Just a heads up on the 24/96.

First, its a great starting out card. Good sound but not very 3 dimensional. Another item is that it has a midrange emphasis which can catch you off guard on your mixes. This means that volume wise you will over compensate your low and high end and under compensate your midrange which you will notice when you take your mixes to car or house stereos.

Once you learn your way around the EQ profile of the card your mixes will be more transferable. I used one for over 3 years and was very pleased with the performance. If you get a preamp with SPDIF out you can use all 4 available channels on the card. As pointed out, two analog and 2 SPDIF channels gives you 4 simultaneous tracks.

Not sure if they still provide Giga 24 in the package but it is a nice peice of software for free.

Thanks, Middleman. I have a Eurorack Model MX602A 6-channel Mic/Line Mixer and a Shure SM58. Would that enable me to send two channels plus SPDIF to the 24/96? I looked at the spec sheet (http://www.behringer-download.com/MX602A/MX602A_B_Specs.pdf) but I can't make heads or tails of it.

Sorry for the newbie questions, but I really have NO sound recording experience.
 
The Behringer does not have SPDIF jacks so there is no convertor in the unit. You would only be able to do 2 tracks of simultaneous audio with that mixer and the 24/96. There are some low end Behringer products that are preamps (same as your mixer inputs in quality) and have AES connectors. You could get an AES to SPDIF conversion box and connect to your soundcard. Then you would be able to take advantage of the SPDIF outputs on the card.
 
Middleman said:
I started putting compensating EQ on the Master buss to reduce the problem and after that things worked OK.

I think I might be inclined to agree with this, what sort of compensation are you talking here, and at which frequency range are you noticing this?
 
Here is the initial curve I came up with to get better translation. I deleted the final version but this is pretty close to what I was using. The final version backed off on the high cuts because this one was too severe above 5K. You can see where the midrange starts to cut about 500Hz which made me push the mix in that range. Hope this helps some others.

This is primarily for translation mind you.
 

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Before going for audiophile 2496 I would check out and consider EMU0404, ESI Juli@ and M-audios own Audiophile 192 (don't know where that one will be street price). Things change...

Not saying 2496 is a bad choice, but it's not obvious anymore if you're not dead set on the budget and hate Creative/Emu and their drivers (that one is hard to argue on ESI though).
 
Well, these things are made in a plant somewhere in the far-east or china.
Sometimes the plants fit "near equivelants" to the spec componants, or ones of dubious quality, especially capacitors. St-audio have had problems with this, and I wouldn't be surprised if it can't happen with other brands. M-audio have certainly had problems with bad capacitors in the power supply of the Delta 1010 rack in the past - it could happen in the card audio circuits too, and that would affect frequency response.

Drivers do have bearing on the soundquality. With Windows and a WDM driver, both MME(wave) and DirectSound pass through a Microsoft software DSP called Kmixer. It's Sample-rate converter is actually quite good on its best quality setting, but it is important to realise that these drivers do not have a totally clean path. Because Kmixer is part of Windows, there is nothing the card makers can do about it. Cakewalks WDM/KS mode and ASIO, GSIF etc, do completely bypass it fortunately.
 
2496 - hard to beat for the money!

Value and performance for dollars, it's hard to beat the 2496. It usually will boast a lower latency than most of the new USB devices out there, gives you 4 ins (if you utilize the spdif) and M-Audio writes great drivers for mac & pc.

One great sounding and economic option for a pre-amp with spdif out is the Samson C-valve . And it looks cool! Check out the nifty lit meter!! I've used this product and it is a great compliment to the 2496.

Hope that helps,

Jason
 
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