What is the difference?

  • Thread starter Thread starter ella
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ella

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I am very curious to know the difference between sound cards?

Like is there a difference in recording between the audiophile or my duo and a 10/10 card? Or an even better a/d converter?

I am really curious if I should upgrade my system or not? Or is it really about more ins and outs?

If its about the signal in then wouldnt a good preamp be better then an upgrade or am i thinking way off here?

Thanks!!
 
The quality of the converters play the biggest part in sound quality
 
will a better soundcard makes things any easier on my computer?
 
I get under 5ms with the duo as far as latency I see no need to be spending more for just latency?

And what are the specific differences in the converters? Why are they different? What makes one piece of digital technology different then another one?

Seems kind of fishy to me. Its just codecs and codecs are hardcode. If quality is about the signal then it is about the preamp not the digital conversion?

I am having a hardtime understanding why I should pay so much more $1200-2000 for a professional a/d d/a when a good mixer and good preamps would possibly do the same?

I am really curious, since a lot of people think you got to pay for the gear to be good, wondering if it really is true in this area, or just a bunch of bunk.
 
Ella, there is a major difference in quality between a $100 card and a $1000 card. There is a lot going in the AD process that quality converters definitely will improve the sound quality.

Clock jitter. The better converters have more stable clocks. This translates into better Stereo field. On a system with high clock jitter the stereo image gets blurred, and yes, the difference is very audible.

Aliasing/antialiasing. I'd rather have a good quality 44.1kHz converter than a crappy 96kHz one. Why? Because the quality unit will exhibit less aliasing than the crappy one running at over 2x the sampling rate.

Headroom. Better converters also have better analog stages and lower self noise which translates to higher headroom and clarity of sound.

You can get better preamps and other stuff, that will certainly also improve the audio quality. But if the soundcard is subpar, to some extent it kind of negates the quality gains of other gear.

My $0.02
 
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