On Tue, 9 Dec 2003 18:23:57 -0500, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

"Scott Gardner" wrote in message

On Tue, 9 Dec 2003 17:34:50 -0500, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

I built it a few months ago as an exercise for my right hand after my
motorcycle accident. Since it's clear acrylic, I had to assemble the
whole thing wearing gloves, and you can't use a power screwdriver on
an acrylic case. Also, with all the drives, fans, and lights, the
clear case forced me to come up with an alternate way of powering
everything other than a Medusa's head of Y-splitters upon Y-splitters.
I ended up cutting all of the drive power cables off of the power
supply (the yellow-black-black-red ones) and making a single cable
from the power supply. It goes from the power supply to the closest
device, then the next device, and so on through to all 23 devices that
need power. That way, there's only one cable that makes its way
around the case once. That was the single biggest visual improvement.

I think you've gone outside the envelope of what most power supplies were
designed to drive in terms of numbers of connectors.

I was concerned about that as well, but I'm still well within the
total wattage capacity of the power supply, and I used 14-gauge wire
for the custom cable, so no problems there.

More likely, some kind of setup difficulty.

What kind of sound card setup problems so you usually see? Other
than changing drivers, I can't think of much to change.

To troubleshoot a problem like this, first I'd try standardized
test like the Audio Rightmark - http://audio.rightmark.org/

I'll give it a shot. Assuming the jumper is just a stereo 1/8" phono
to 1/8" phono, I already have one of those for connecting the iPod to
my car stereo.

That's the cable. Stereo, right?

Yep, stereo. When you talked about jumpering one socket to another, I
panicked for a second, thinking I was going to have to open the case.
Then I realized what kind of cable you meant.

It only takes a short jumper from the blue socket to the green
socket to run it. That and some level setting. It's totally free and
a relatively small download.

Based on the results of that test, I'd strategize the next move.

But since its so much better than the preamp, its not the highest
priority situation at this moment.

Like I said, I'm actually pretty happy with the results I'm getting,
once the tracks are compressed and played back on my iPod. The low
overall volume was my only complaint, and I think we have that
licked.

I take it that you plan to do some dynamics processing in SoundForge
to bring up the average RMS levels and perceived loudness.

Yep, I did a test today, and used the SoundForge normalization routine
to bring the RMS level up to about -18 dB. The end result turned out
very well.

In SF, normalizing does more than just adjust over-all gain so peaks are at
a predetermined level?

Keep in mind I'm still learning how to do it, but it seems like I can
adjust overall gains so peaks are at a specified level, or I can
normalize such that the RMS is at a certain level. If the RMS
normalization would cause clipping in any of the peaks, you can tell
it to either use dynamic compression, switch to peak normalization
with a maximum peak value of 0.0 dB, or just let it saturate (clip).

Scott Gardner