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Greetings:

I am looking for a capture card. It must be a single PCI card, no external boxes, must have 2 balanced stereo inputs - each stereo pair must feed into a single A/D converter/DSP. No other features needed or wanted. No playback facilities needed.

I need to record from 2 balanced stereo sources into 2 separate recordings. The recording PC will be a 1U rack mount server.

Any recommendations on equipment to look at here, or would I be better off looking to get such a card custom made? I am looking at OEM quantities - 100 to start.

Thanks!

Ron Gage
Westland, MI

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RemyRAD Tue, 11/25/2008 - 04:06

I think your requirements are unrealistic? I know of no 1U server blades to that have numeral to balance inputs with separate analog to digital converters? Just how did you obtain these unrealistic requirements?

I have utilized a single computer with numeral to capture cards and/or a multitrack interface that has 8 balanced inputs, each one having its own analog to digital converter. But it's an external unit and is FireWire oriented. Servers are not meant to capture audio much less have 4 balanced inputs.

And this would be for what kind of application?
Ms. Remy Ann David

anonymous Tue, 11/25/2008 - 21:40

That Marian Trace-8 is an interesting card. Too bad it doesn't have Linux support... http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Vendor-Marian

Can't use it.

At this point, I am considering going with a pair of ART USB Dual Pre devices, removed from their case and embedded into my server chassis. http://www.artproaudio.com/products.asp?type=90&cat=13&id=132 Looks like about the only way I am going to be able to do this without bankrupting the project

Thanks!

Ron

anonymous Tue, 11/25/2008 - 23:48

While I can't speak about every specific card in the universe, my experience has been largely good with regards to Linux support for various "pro" audio cards. I once had an E-MU 1820 that worked quite well under Linux.

The best reference for current supportability of various cards is the Alsa Project homepage - http://www.alsa-project.org. They have a good reference for different cards under Linux.

The hint on the ART modules being supported under Linux is 1) they are USB based and 2) no driver needed under Windows. This tells me that it's using a generic audio device through USB and the Linux USB stack should cleanly support it as well. At the worst, I might need to add vendor/device codes to the driver - a fairly trivial task.

Yes, I could be wrong on this but I believe the odds are quite in favor of this being the correct case.

Ron Gage

Boswell Wed, 11/26/2008 - 03:17

rongage wrote: That Marian Trace-8 is an interesting card. Too bad it doesn't have Linux support... http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Vendor-Marian

Can't use it.

It would be worth contacting Marian to talk this one over. It could be that there are Unix drivers available for one of their other boards that would actually work for just the ADC input section of the Trace-8.

rongage wrote: At this point, I am considering going with a pair of ART USB Dual Pre devices, removed from their case and embedded into my server chassis. http://www.artproaudio.com/products.asp?type=90&cat=13&id=132 Looks like about the only way I am going to be able to do this without bankrupting the project

OK, but now you are moving the goal posts. If you have room in the 1U chassis for other bits and pieces, it opens up more possibilities. As far as the ART units go, I would be very wary of using a pair of independent USB devices simultaneously. Maybe the Unix USB drivers are better behaved than the Windows ones, but attempting to stream concurrent audio data from two separate USB devices to a disk would normally be a recipe for disaster.