"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Serge Auckland" wrote in message
...
however, my own attempts to get a USB sound card that was any good
doesn't bode well.
Strange, I find many good ones.
I tried several, from Alesis and others, and they wouldn't pass a
back-to-back test with RMAA.
Strange, I find many good ones.
In each case (I tried three different ones) they distorted either on
output when the output was at 0dBFS
That's what digital does. it clips hard for sure at 0 dB FS or in the real
world, just a tad below that.
(one even distorted at -2dBFS)
Now that is uncalled for. Not good gear. I can see maybe -1 dB FS,
ut -2 is IMO too sleazy.
or on the inputs when the level went up above about 0dBu.
Most consumer audio interfaces are designed for FS = 1 volt rms. If you
want to go higher, you may have to use an external analog attenuator.
Any sound card that clips hard at 0dBFS is, in my view, broken. 0dBFS should
be passed totally clean, given that so many CDs now are mastered right up to
0dBFS, playing one of these CDs through the sound card will make an already
poor CD sound worse, so no, in my real world, Digital stuff is totally good
to 0dBFS, not just to -1dB (or even -0.1dBFS). My now 10 year old Digigram
card is, so why is modern stuff worse?
As to levels, I should have made clear I require balanced analogue ins and
outs and digital I/O as well, although in this case, unbalanced S-PDIF is
fine, I don't need balanced AES-EBU. Ideally, I'd like the analogue ins and
outs to provide EBU recommended levels of +18dBu for 0dBFS, but I'd be
satisfied with +8dBu. Again, my 10 year old card does +10dBu in and out, so
why not something modern?
S.
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