PCI/ISA question for all you PC gurus

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RWhite

Well-known member
Usually I'm pretty good on answering other's PC questions, but I want to get some other folks feedback on this issue.

First the background: In my main PC I use a Gadget Labs Wave 824 for audio recording. This unit uses a PCI card connected to an external box. I also have an old SoundBlaster 16 ISA card in the system. I have it for two reasons: one, in case I want to play the occasional game, and two because it has a Roland Sound Canvas daughtercard that I use for some MIDI sounds.
I also have an extra sound card, a Diamond Monster MX200 PCI, with a MIDI daughtercard sounding as good as the Roland. Its normal sound (i.e. games) is quite a bit better than the Sound Blaster 16.

Now here's the question: If my prime goal is to make sure my Gadget labs units keeps working flawlessly, am I better off using an ISA or a PCI soundcard? A Gadget Labs rep told me (before they went out of business) that a PCI sound card could theoretically cause some noise on the PCI bus which could be picked up by the Gadget Labs card. On the other hand, I know that ISA sound cards cause a much larger cpu resource "hit" than do PCI sound cards. I have seen test data that shows a working ISA sound card can consume up to 30% of your cpu resources, as opposed to the typical PCI card which is between 3-5%.

So far the SB16 has not caused me any problems, but I am temped to tinker with the system. Has anybody had any experiances with a similar situation?
 
God damn, an SB16, I was so jealous when a friend of mine got one of them. I was still squeaking on a SB V2.0

To answer your question, i'd have to try it out. "Suck it and see" as my dodgy high school wood work teacher used to say.

It sounds as if its working so - sweet.

There must be someone out there who sits around with multimeters, oscilloscopes and a stopwatch who tests bus speeds and stuff. But that would cut into my beer drinking time :o)

Cheers
Robin
http://www.pc-music.com
 
Yeah I know it is silly to be wondering about something that is working perfectly, but... It would be nice to use my Monster card, I just don't want to change cards then find out weeks later that my recordings now have some barely noticeably glitch in them.
 
most hardware-conflict style glitches are of the VERY-noticable variety, ive found

xoxo
 
The Gadget Labs dude may have been right. I recently went through some hardware hell when I decided to rearrange may perfect setup (doh!). It turned out that what was causing the noise (of the VERY-noticable variety) was the SB Live PCI sound card. Took a while to figure that out because I also switched video cards and a couple other things (bad idea doing all of that at once). Now I'm back to a SB Awe64 Gold ISA card and everything's cool again. I'm sacrificing my rear surround speakers (the reason I bought the Live - for the front/rear outs), but oh well. I'm using a MOTU 1224 for recording, btw.
 
I have the soundblaster Awe 64 gold and love the descent quality midi. I use it with my darla audio card, my mackie vlz pro mixer, AT4033 mike, 3630 compressor, cool edit pro software, alesis nano verb, my computer, acoustic mirror, with samplitude impulse files, and other assorted software pluggins. The above stuff may not seem very impressive,but it all works perfectly. I have no problems with noise, but it took me a long time to learn how to mix. I love it .

Sorry for rambling on.
 
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