Hello, The Hammerfall has a great reputation, but it might be more cost-effective to go with one of the M-Audio cards if you don't need 16-24 channels of audio. The biggest selling point of the Hammerfall cards (besides their legendary low-latency performance) is the massive number of channels, and the ability to use external converters. However, if you're not going to be using external D/A's, or a digital mixer, then you're probably better off going with a card that uses an external breakout box for the A/D/A, because that offers better isolation from the CPU than you would get from the Hammerfall's daughterboards. I personally use an M-Audio Delta 1010 and have been quite happy with its performance under Linux; other cards from manufacturers like Terratec which also use the Envy24 chipset should work well too. All of this, of course, is not meant on a diss on the Hammerfall cards - they really are great cards, however, if you're mostly just doing CSound, with a bit of analog tape transfer, it probably is severe overkill. HTH, dgm pma wrote:
> Hi, Everyone. > > As my digital-audio-hardware savvy is wanting, I would much appreciate > any critique of the following (not very long) purchase proposal. > > My old sound card, a vintage '91 MTU MicroSound running with Csound > under MS-Windows, died recently. I am in search of a replacement, to > run in a newer > box under Debian Linux. My use of the system use will consist mainly > of Csound generation to disk (no realtime issues) and the CD-burning > of selected results. I'll want to hear directly from disk too, and > record occasionally from analog tape. > > My proposed solution is an RME Hammerfall Lite, together with its two > analog expansion boards, the AEB4-I & AEB4-O. If I understand, the > main board on its own will format output appropriately for audio-CD, > but requires the AEB4-I to record from analog sources, and requires > the AEB4-O to play directly from disk. > > Question 1: Do I understand these essentials correctly? (Already > have also the ALSA-0.9 sources, CD-burner, amplifier and speakers.) > > Question 2: Does the RME constitute overkill -- for someone mainly > wanting sound _quality_ (not whatever new fancy functionalities) in > his old-fashioned style of use? If a simpler alternate could serve > me as well, any suggestions? > > Thanks in advance for your time. > Peter >
