Having read several recent posts concerning sound cards for panadapter use, I thought I would share my own recent experience with the Creative E-MU-0204 card. My operating system is Win7 64 bit with 8 GB RAM. I built Larry Phipps' LP-PAN2 and am running NaP3 at 192 KHz with MixW via LP-Bridge. This combination is stable and works very nicely...with the following cautions and caveats:
1. The 0204 comes with an install disk and the driver contained thereon works fine. It is an MME driver. Once installed, however, the computer's audio mixer must be configured to command the driver to lock in sampling rates of 192,000 Hz. If this is not done, the 0204 will default to a 48 Khz sampling rate regardless of what rate is called for by NaP3. To accomplish this, right click on the speaker icon in the Windows system tray. This pops up a menu. Select 'recording devices' and up comes a list of the sound devices on your computer. Double click on E-MU 0204 and in the next screen select the 'advanced' tab. Under 'default format' select '2 channel, 24 bit, 192000 Hz (Studio Quality)' and click 'Apply' and 'OK' Now select the 'Levels' tab and set main volume to a value of 2. This will take you back to where you started. Hit 'OK' to exit the setup screen. 2. If your computer boasts over 4 gig of RAM, you must throttle it back to no more than 4 GB. This is done via the msconfig utility. Hit the Windows 'Start' icon, type msconfig and hit enter. This brings up a system configuration screen. Select the 'boot' tab and then 'Advanced options...' Now, in the screen that comes up, enter 4095 as the maximum memory and hit 'OK'. When your computer is rebooted, it will have 4 GB of RAM at its disposal. 3. USB 2.0 is required, otherwise the 0204 will default to 48 KHz. If you use a hub, make sure it is 2.0 compliant and has its own power supply. Interestingly, the driver GUI will state the USB speed at the lower left of the screen. The URL for driver support is www dot creative dot com/emu. Select "Support", then 'E-MU 0204 USB 2.0' All of the above information, and more, is available on the telepostinc website. I followed Larry's instructions to the letter and was rewarded with a nice smooth result. If I may say so, LP-Bridge is amazing. Your mileage may vary, of course. That's computers for you : ) Bill, WA4KBD ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
