Seeking Alternatives to Sound Card Upgrades for Multi Input Devices

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nofreeride

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I have the new Fry's Electronics multimedia desk top PC and an old Teac 3340s with 4 track masters that I want to load onto the PC to digitally remix. Are there any multi-track input devices that work from a USB connection?

If not, what are my options short of installing a 4 ins sounds card?
 
You could try doing it two tracks at a time and lining the separate passes up in your multitrack software.

The problem with this approach might be that the tape deck's motor speed is not precies enough and the pairs of tracks will be slightly out of whack as time passes. But over the length of a typical pop song (2-3 minutes) this might be negligible. Tip: if you have any room on front of the tape and between each songs that you can record a sharp, transient "click" on all four tracks just before each song starts, the spike it makes in your recording software sill give you a very clear visual reference to line up the pairs of tracks.
 
4 Track Input Alternative

Thanks for the idea. If I can't find a decent priced input device that connects to the USB /Serial/ Parallel ports, this is what I'll do.
 
Re: 4 Track Input Alternative

nofreeride said:
Thanks for the idea. If I can't find a decent priced input device that connects to the USB /Serial/ Parallel ports, this is what I'll do.
Click to expand...

USB has barely enough bandwidth for 4 tracks of 24bit audio. If you're not on a laptop, a PCI card would be better.

Parallel and Serial would be completely innapropriate.
 
The midiman Quatro can do 4 channels, but only 16/48 max. Maybe there are some usb2 devices out that can handle higher.
 
Found a 4 Channel USB device

Here's what I've found:

EgoSys MIDI Terminal M4U

1. 4 in / 4 out, 64 MIDI channels
2. High speed connection to USB-equipped PC or Macintosh computers
3. MIDI activity indicators for each port
4. USB powered - requires no external power supply
5. Perfect MIDI timing
6. Support true Plug-and-Play installation requires no Device Driver, IRQ, I/O Address or DMAchannel setup
7. Compact 1/3 rack size
8. Optimized for Windows XP and MAC OS X

But, I haven't been able to verify the frequency ranges. I found a website selling it for $129. Seems reasonable considering everything else I've found is at least $500.

Anybody know if the frequency range on this puppy is good enough?


Thanks,
Nofreeride
 
The Ego-Sys is a MIDI interface. But even if it was an audio interface, it would have the same limitation as the Quattro. The bandwidth of USB 1.x is what it is, and once you fill the pipe, you've filled the pipe.

Do you have a FireWire port on your PC? There's the M Audio Delta 410, I think it's called, that has four ins and connects to the computer via FireWire. FireWire has a much higher bandwidth than USB and can easily handle four tracks at full 24-bit, 96 kHz. There are others popping up on the market everyday. And soon I suspect the USB ones will all be replaced with USB 2.x versions, which will be as capable as the FireWire ones now. I don't think there's even one yet out on the market, though.
 
Thanks for the advice. Yes, I have Both Firewire and USB2. It's a new multimedia PC. But, I haven't found a reasonably priced firewire device - most are well over $500.
 
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