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+1 on the Lynx cards. We have six AES16 that have been in service for four years now. As with all computer systems they require tweaking from time to time as the OS is updated, but I've found maintenance to be pretty straight-forward. To answer a couple of Tom's points below, jitter is not a issue in digital-to-digital data flow. This is called interface jitter, and as long as the samples arrive at their destination intact no harm is done. (The he other kind of jitter is called sampling jitter, it happens during ADC and can cause major problems) So Firewire and USB interfaces are not necessarily bad, it really depends on the implementation. Personally, I dislike the cables and connectors, especially Firewire. The whole system seems dodgy to me. You can also run into problems if you want to use Firewire/USB DAC and ADC units from different manufacturers, often this is impossible because of incompatible drivers. I much prefer to stick with AES. The interaction between audio and video subsystems is probably caused by an IRQ conflics. My memory is a little hazy since I haven't had to deal with this for a few years, but occasionally PCI slots will share the same IRQ address so if the audio and video card are in slots that share, glitches can be put into the audio stream when minimizing windows or a monitor going to sleep. Usually the recommendation is that if this happens try swapping PCI slots. I think that in Windows 7 you can manually assign IRQ addresses but like I said I haven't had to deal with this for a while so I may be misremembering. -- Konrad Strauss Director of Recording Arts, Professor of Music Indiana University Jacobs School of Music http://mypage.iu.edu/~kstrauss http://www.music.indiana.edu/departments/academic/recording-arts/ On 8/9/11 1:46 PM, "Tom Fine" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: Hi David: That's a real bummer. Those are my front-line ADC's too. There has been much progress in recent years with external ADC's. However, I keep reading articles and papers about the USB connection not being ideal due to jitter and latency issues. And yet, firewire keeps getting de-emphasized by hardware manufacturers. I'm also not sure what role video circuitry plays in a modern Windows system. Even thru XP, there was some interaction between digital audio and the video subsystem, I'm not expert enough to discuss details but there are articles and white papers out there. If you're doing your analog-to-digital conversion externally and then "recording" an AES/EBU stream, it seems like you could use a very simple interface, but again I'm not sure how much clocking and latency matter in that setup. I've had some CardDeluxe cards since 1999 and they still work fine. Why not just recycle them as you upgrade computers, or are you building out more workstations and now need a new way to skin the cat? -- Tom Fine ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Seubert" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2011 1:38 PM Subject: [ARSCLIST] digital input sound card recommendation > This discussion has come up repeatedly over the years but I just learned >that the Digital Audio > Labs CardDelux has been discontinued. I'm not sure why they have been >discontinued, but we got a > call from the manufacturer who said that they are "obsolete." We have >long used their cards (we > are a PC shop) and I need to spec out another PC-based audio >workstation. I use the CardDelux for > the AES/EBU digital inputs. > > What are people using for digital input from an external ADC these days? >Is there an equivalent > sound card to the DAL card with AES/EBU digital inputs? I know some ADCs >offer firewire/USB > outputs, but I haven't really explored that. > > Please send any suggestions to me on or off list. > > David Seubert > UCSB >