You can utilize either of those for all sounds...

Thanks, Brock.

Any others?

I'll second what Brock said
Opus

well you can with an echo gina24, but i don't recomend it. reason for this is that windows sound files are sampled at 8 and 11bit and when your sound card activates one of the sound files, the sound cards rate drops to match the sound file. Next thing you know you got crap recordings. so make sure to turn off your window sounds!!! better off keeping the all that other shit for another computer anyway and keep your music pc seperate.

Hold On,
I just want to verify what you said. That If a Windows soundfile Is at 8 bits( where's this curious 11 coming from, though?) and the soundcard has to accomadate this resolution all files will thereafter be played at that bit-rate? That makes no sense.

So with the Echo Gina it's inconvenient and disastrous if you don't know what's going on ? -

but, would this be the case with the Audiophile 2496, or not so?

Thanks, Philly, and I think and I'll be glad to see this topic keep going.

Most soundcards will have a default sample and bit rate that you can set for them to revert back to when idle. I know that the audiophile has this feature. Regardless your soundcard will accomodate whichever signal is passed to it from the system. Your project in your audio software will determine what happens with the card anyway for recording. It is easy enough to check by playing some windows sounds, open up a project and look at the soundcards control panel to see what sample rate and bit rate it has set itself to. The only problems I can forsee (other than putting games on a daw which is really not advised as they will ultimately make changes on your system that are graphics oriented upon install) is that some windows drivers are not as well written as their asio counterparts and can sometimes cause plosives upon playback and stop of sounds. This used to be a problem with the m-auido drivers, but they fixed this a year or two ago. Again, there will not be any problems with using either of these cards for all sounds...

The M-Audio will not play CDs. There is no connector for the audio cable from the Cd-Rom. This may or may not be a concern to you. Any music you want to listen to can be stored on a CD as a .wav or mp3, then opened in any media player like winamp.

Flat
If on Win2K or Xp you do NOT need the digital cable...all you need to do is enable digital audio on the CDROM properties and the CD WILL play through ANY soundcard you have set to be the main Windows audio player!
Only on win98 or lower do you need the digital cable from the CDROM to the soundcard
Peace
Opus

I was not aware of that. Yet another reason why I should upgrade my OS, or at the least, dual boot. :tu:

i've had a 2496 for a year. it works great.it doesn't have any built in sounds that games sometimes use but it will play anything . cd,s mp3's ect that are in your computer if told to. the only thing i noticed is if i crank up the buffer to the max setting when i'm online and get you've got mail or even the windows xp tune upon start up. you will get some crackling. through time i realized it was the buffer. a lower setting works perfectly. somewhere around 512.

chris perra

ok people let me try to clear things up as to what i said earlier... when in 98, there was a flaw in echos drivers that when the event of a sound file that was below the bit rate you set your gina24 was played, would also drop the bit rate of your gina24. This was fixed with their driver updates and is not a problem in XP. Not sure if there's still a problem with that in 98 since i've been on XP for a while now. That's why it is always recomended to turn off windows sounds, and because its not needed to run any applications.

Originally posted by Philly Flex:
That's why it is always recomended to turn off windows sounds, and because its not needed to run any applications.

LOL, I thought it was becuase windows sound schemes suck. :D

haha lol blutone.