Unfortunately cheap sound cards are just that, cheap. I have several SB models and I'm not happy with any of them, below is a list of cards I've tried;

SB Live 16 bits, 48KHz, works OK, obsolete

SB Live USB 16bits, 48KHz, < $30, obsolete

SB Live 24 PCI 24 bits,96KHz, <$30, works not too bad considering cost.

SB Live USB 24 bits,96KHz < $50, works OK but consumes a lot of CPU cycles, requires USB2 B mode, problems with really achieving 96KHz, stay away from this one.

SB Audigy 2 ZS 24 bits,96KHz, < $80, high noise floor, I've rather have the Delta

Chaintech AV-710 20 bits, 48KHz, <$25, consumes low CPU cycles.

Delta-44 24 bits,96KHz, < $150, performs as advertised, low noise, best card I own, don't forget to buy adapter cables since it uses 1/4 phono plugs.

Given all the time I've wasted on trying to make some of these cards work, I should have bought the Delta in the first place and I would have saved time and money. If your card is worthless, and you don't have the money the Chaintech and the SB Live 24 PCI are not bad considering their under $30 cost. But if you want to seriously play with SDR, maybe build your own or some of the designs available out there save your money and buy the Delta-44.

If I have time tonight, I will slip the Chaintech card in my new PC and give you a report of how well it does.




At 12:59 PM 1/30/2006, you wrote:

Thanks for the reply Cecil,
I've only noticed one Chaintech card that claimed the 192 Khz
sampling it was the AV-710. The lack of information even on their
specs is what I'm running into. May have to break down and buy a
Delta 44, I was hoping I could find a bargain on a card someone else
had tried. I'm kind of new to this group, but seems a large majority
have Delta 44 cards.
Thanks Joe k0ivk

--- In softrock40@..., KD5NWA <KD5NWA@c...> wrote:

If it's the same card I don't know, but they have a card I bought

for

$23 from Newegg, it claims 192KHz, so I went ahead and bought one.

Nowhere were the specs clear on it, not even at the manufacturers,
the upshot, after I bought it you discover that it does 192KHz, and
96KHz only on the digital port and not the analog port. It did have
one nice feature in that with SIO4ALL you could use DMA transfers

so

the CPU usage went way down. The board is only good to 20 bits but
that is better than 16.

If you want the exact model I purchased, let me know, and I'll look
for the card.

At 12:08 PM 1/30/2006, you wrote:

Hello Everyone.
I have been successfully using a Santa Cruz card for my SR40

and SR

5.0s but would like to try a 96Khz sampling 24 bit card. I would

buy a

Delta 44 card but hesitate to spend that much for a $30 receiver.

I

looked at the Creative Live card but was discouraged by the dual
purpose input/output arrangment. I use the Soft Rock rx on the

Santa

Cruz card and feed output to the on-board sound card using Digipan

to

copy PSK31. I would hate to mess that system up to acheive wider
bandwidth.
Has anyone had success with other less expensive 96Khz 24 bit

cards

that have separate stereo line in and at least 2 stereo outputs? I
notice Chaintech has a card that claims 192Khz sampling,and

lots of

inputs/outputs!!! Has anyone tried it?
Thanks, Joe k0ivk







Yahoo! Groups Links

Cecil Bayona
KD5NWA
www.qrpradio.com

I fail to see why doing the same thing over and over and getting

the

same results every time is insanity: I've almost proved it isn't;
only a few more tests now and I'm sure results will differ this

time ...

Yahoo! Groups Links

Cecil Bayona
KD5NWA
www.qrpradio.com

I fail to see why doing the same thing over and over and getting the same results every time is insanity: I've almost proved it isn't; only a few more tests now and I'm sure results will differ this time ...


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Hello Farhan and the group,

I currenty use the Creative Soundblaster Live! 24 bit card and can
confirm it performs well but.... so far I have only been able to get
it to work correctly with KGKSDR software. "Rocky" and "SDRadio" also
work to some degree but do not give any image cancellation with my
Softrock V5.

As I understand it the Soundblaster Live! products have a slight
peculiarity which causes the left and right audio channels to be
slightly miss-timed with the result that image cancellation does not
work correctly. However, the KGKSDR software has an option to permit
Soundblaster Live! cards to be used and to function correctly.
I can confirm that the KGKSDR software does indeed work very well with
a Soundblaster Live! 24 bit soundcard with excellent image
cancellation. My PC system is a Pentium 4 Processor running at 1.4 GHz
and the KGKSDR software just about takes my CPU to the limit (around
95%) but I find the performance very impressive.

It seems the Soundblaster Live! 24 bit soundcard also has very good
noise performance. Duncan (M0KGK) did some tests with a number of
soundcards and the Soundblaster Live! came out as being very good
value for money. Have a look at the link below:



If you decide to try the KGKSDR software then go to:



I hope this helps. Good luck Farhan and have fun with SDR.

My regards to all on the list.

73's

Des (M0AYF)




--- In softrock40@..., "Farhan" <fanoo@y...> wrote:

Hello guys!

I was wondering which of these two soundcards would be better:

Creative Soundblaster Live! 24 bits

or

Creative Audigy 2 Zs


Actually i am low on budget and would want to make do with the
Soundblaster Live since is very cheap. How's the performance of the
SB Live compared to the audigy 2 zs??


I live in Pakistan and M-Audio delta 44 isnt available here. only
the creative cards are available. otherwise, no doubt, i would have
bought the delta.

thank you!

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------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello guys!

I was wondering which of these two soundcards would be better:

Creative Soundblaster Live! 24 bits

or

Creative Audigy 2 Zs


Actually i am low on budget and would want to make do with the
Soundblaster Live since is very cheap. How's the performance of the
SB Live compared to the audigy 2 zs??


I live in Pakistan and M-Audio delta 44 isnt available here. only
the creative cards are available. otherwise, no doubt, i would have
bought the delta.

thank you!

Hello Kees,
Thanks for the reply. I am only interested in a 96Khz sampling 24
bit card. The Santa Cruz is a FB card but only supports 48khz. I may
try the SB Live card, it seems several have tried it with success. I
was only asking if anyone had tried the Chaintech card, the price was
good and I liked the input/output arrangement better than the SB
Live. I said I would like to avoid buying a card as expensive as the
Delta 44 for a $30 SDR demo Rx, but seems several have had problems
with cheaper cards. The specs don't always tell the whole story. 73, Joe k0ivk

From: "John H. Fisher" <k5jhf@...>
Reply-To: softrock40@...
To: Bill Tracey <kd5tfd@...>
CC: aqrp@..., softrock40@...
Subject: [softrock40] Re: [AQRP] Manhandle those .5mm pins
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 07:56:01 -0600

Wow, Bill, thanks very much :-) What an interesting article. I've always
wondered how you solder those pinless packages. Best Wishes on your
small parts, too. You've given me new hope :-) Take Care and thanks
again for all your work on the Xylo-SDR project :-)

Regards,
John

Bill Tracey wrote:

Chips with pins, what a luxury!

The latest hobbyist challenge I've got is this puppy:




No pins on this sucker! Think I may have to go the 'skillet reflow'
(

) method to get this chip attached.

Actually - congratulations on getting your 64 LQFP guy down -- they
can be tough -- especially on a board w/o solder mask.

Cheers,

Bill (kd5tfd)


At 10:02 PM 1/30/2006, you wrote:

--
Regards,
John

=========================================================
email: k5jhf@...
photos:
files:
web page:
call sign: K5JHF
=========================================================

Chips with pins, what a luxury!

The latest hobbyist challenge I've got is this puppy:




No pins on this sucker! Think I may have to go the 'skillet reflow' ( ) method to get this chip attached.

Actually - congratulations on getting your 64 LQFP guy down -- they can be tough -- especially on a board w/o solder mask.

Cheers,

Bill (kd5tfd)


At 10:02 PM 1/30/2006, you wrote:

Thanks for the reply.
?
I was reading the other messages regarding different soundcards. It seems that audigy 2 zs is quite noisy. Those noise figures on that website are pretty freaky.
?
is there anyway that this noise level be decreased??
?
I really have no means to get the delta 44 or i would have :(
?


Ken - N9VV wrote:

re: Audigy2ZS, check the terrible noise that the card generates.

Al K2WS did some measurements

de Ken

I got the SB Live 24bit external working last night. It only uses USB1.1
so
is really straining at 96K/24b. It did sound wonderful however when it was
working and there was a tiny little <10db spike at 7040 with no sidebands.
I
was running the SRv5 with Rocky. The central spike was so small I couldn't
actually hear it when panning through it at any bandwidth and trying to
compare it to something either side.

However 96K, two channels, and 3 bytes per sample adds up to nearly
600KB/s.
With overhead, USB1.1 is really only good for about 1MB/s so it doesn't
take
much to overload it. A good example is trying to get Rocky to use the
Creative USB for output as well. That immediately produced a warning from
the
driver and dropped me back to 96K/16b mode. Other USB activity seemed to
be
able to knock it back to 16bit as well. I had forgotten that the Creative
machine was only USB1.1... It did perform much better on my wife's
Centrino
1.5Ghz notebook than my old P3/850 probably because the processor was
getting
pretty loaded on my P3.

At 16 bit the central spur was around 20db and could actually be heard. So
it
seems that 24bit is pretty useful.

Based on this I'd like to get a 96/24 USB2 implementation running. The
link
itself would be idling at 600KB/s. The more interesting part would be
getting
the A/D and USB HW/SW working. I really don't need the USB interface to
have
an output capability. Any PC built in audio output would be fine for that.
And it should be a lot easier to setup a inbound stream rather than have
to
manage full duplex both from a HW and software standpoint.

As an aside: I really don't expect PCs to ever have a SDR friendly audio
input capability as standard except on a highend specialty machine. The
useage model for PCs is primarily one of consumption when it comes to high
quality audio or video rather than creation. If you want high quality
creation you get to pay money for it, i.e. Delta44.

For my purposes an addin card is unpalatable since for new machines I'm
only
buying notebooks. That either means a MiniPCI card or USB for inputs. I
think
the USB solution is more likely to be able to provide a more reliably
quiet
environment for capture than a card plugged into a machine with an unknown
EMI environment.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to get one working but I'd like to give
it
enough thought to see if it's possible. The AD1871 I mentioned in the
other
thread is one possibility for the A/D portion.

73

jim ab3cv