New bargain soundcard: E-MU 0404

I just have this vision of turning my humble PC into a TACT RCS2.2 for £100 :lol:

 

Chris, I've had visions of participating in an all night orgy with the full complement of Victoria's Secret models. I suspect my vision is as likely to occur as yours :lol:

Michael.

 

:lol::lol::lol:

When I saw the email for the above, I wondered which thread you were replying too. I'm still getting daydream flashes of Jon Bon Jovi and Axel Rose :shame:

 

I mentioned this card a few months ago. It uses the same converters as Digidesign (ProTools) so should sound pretty good, considerably better than the MAudio stuff! (but I have not heard one now being a Mac owner - they are PC only)

 

Hi Dominic,

The card does sound clearly better than the Terratec card I used to have. Almost 1 week on and I'm still impressed with the sound its putting out, very musical, detailed, rich and full bodied sound, and a very emotional dynamic sound. I was so impressed I persuaded my mate to get one for his rig to replace his Terratec also and he has come to the same conclusion.

This is THE sub £100 (or even sub £200, £300) card to have at the moment IMO.

 

But their drivers aren't

They're still ridiculously bloaty for a sound card and the early ones are less stable than the M-Audio ones. That said the EMU is a good card and sounds great and is bloody good VFM.

I've got one of these on order though...but it's more expensive!

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Audiophile192-main.html

Mmmmm!

Andy.

P.S. the standard M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 can be considerably improved with a few minor mods and is still the best card I've heard (as opposed to measured).

Here's the basic RMAA results for the 0404 I tried: -

External loopback (line-out - line-in)
Sampling mode: 24-bit, 44.1 kHz

Summary
Frequency response (from 40 Hz to 15 kHz), dB: +0.10, -0.05 Very good
Noise level, dB (A): -94.8 Very good
Dynamic range, dB (A): 93.2 Very good
THD, %: 0.0010 Excellent
IMD, %: 0.012 Very good
Stereo crosstalk, dB: -97.7 Excellent

Here's my Audiophile 24/96: -

Testing chain: External loopback (line-out - line-in)
Sampling mode: 24-bit, 44 kHz

Summary
Frequency response (from 40 Hz to 15 kHz), dB: +0.02, -0.07 Excellent
Noise level, dB (A): -102.1 Excellent
Dynamic range, dB (A): 100.0 Excellent
THD, %: 0.0009 Excellent
IMD, %: 0.0039 Excellent
Stereo crosstalk, dB: -100.8 Excellent
IMD at 10 kHz, %: 0.0036 Excellent

 

I've just noticed that Tom's Hardware got better results, so I wonder if there's some variability in the Emu's?

Paul, can you RMAA yours, for curiosity's sake?

http://audio.rightmark.org/index_new.shtml

Andy.

 

The AK4393 is the chip used in the SuperDAC. The 4395 is indeed higher spec, in two ways. It has 35dB improvement in digital filter attenuation, and supports 192kHz sample rates.

However, the two chips are pin compatible. I have a 4395 in a drawer at home (have had for about a year), which I may drop into the superDAC or the DEQ2496 (which also uses the 4393) at some point when I get around to it.

 

I thought the EMU 0404 had a better DAC than the Audiophile 192?

 

I'm not aware anyone knows what DAC is used in the Audiophile 192!

It's paper specs are the same as the 0404 though (I think the unit I had must have been dodgy!) and I have very good experience with lots of M-Audio products, they are supremely consistent and stable which tends to leave me with a bias towards them.

I use it mainly as a measurement tool though, not a listening one, so my requirements may be a little different from others.

Andy.

 

Andrew, I looked at the RMAA thing and you need to plug the output into the input, but unfortauntely I dont seem to have a cable with the right connections to make this possible. If I can do it though I'll post my results.

FWIW someone on headfi really seems to believe that the quality of the PSU is important for the EMU, and I have a very good one.

As for the DAC, if you look on the card it should have a DAC chip with the model number printed on it. There was a discussion on headfi about the M-Audio Audiophile 192 and it was said the EMU was better.

http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=89618

 

Surely differences in noise and distortion at the -90dB to -100dB [(a) filtered or not..] are bugger all and sod all? You will get variations just by moving PCI slots at that sort of level?? You can have enjoyable music with a -60dB noise level [LP, cassette, FM radio etc].

 

I'm sure that's true. The Audiophile 24/96 for example runs the input buffers from main PC +/-12V, just heavily filtered with a basic RC circuit. It's far from perfect though and relies on the inherent PSRR of the op-amps to work well. At the expense of some loss of headroom some simple regulation could be of benefit here.

The PC isn't a nice environment for performance at this level, yet I've not found an external USB or firewire unit at the right price or performance yet. The Midiman Flying Calf external A-D have has an obviously cleaner noise floor than the internal card, but doesn't have the bandwidth I need.

I saw that but thought it based on a lot of supposition and little in the way of hard fact. My experience of digital audio is implementation is far more important than the choice of topology or DAC's used, there's little correlation between the measured results (as conventionally presented) and how it sounds, IME.

I might have to re-visit the EMU as a test tool later though, it's certainly cheaper than blowing up the Audiophile 192

Andy.

 

Andy, certainly some of that probably is speculation, but the only tool I tend to use is my ears, and to my ears the EMU sounds absolutely f-ing fantastic. As for the PC being an unfriendly environment, yes I keep hearing this over and over again, but its the end result that matters and in this case the end result is excellent. There are a few people who have compared the EMU to the likes of NAD 541i and such like players and said that they felt the EMU markedly superior. Something to think about if one already has a computer anywhere near the hifi, IMHO.

 

As indeed I said in my first post

Well, good rather than f-ing fantastic, but it's all relative!

Unfortunately mines WAY too noisy to put next to the HiFi, but I've been thinking abou building a small, quiet, 'media server / DVR' for some time, might just have to do it! Any advice on that front?

Andy.

 

This should give you plenty of reading Andy....

http://www.silentpcreview.com/

 

Thanks!

Andy.

 

PBirkett, just as a thought, what music player do you use on your PC? Is there any real difference in quality of playback between say Itunes, Foobar and Winamp? Cheers :MILD:

 

I think I perceive a difference between Foobar and the rest, Foobar being better than the rest, slightly. This I think is down to the dithering it does in its decoder and the Kernel Streaming function, which I guess is the PC equivalent to turning on "tone bypass" on an amplifier.

Mind you there are those that cant tell any difference, and I have to admit the difference is subtle (but probably more noticable on the EMU than it was on the EWX). It just seems to sound cleaner.