[wplug] SBlive

[DAVID G MATTHEWS]

It depends on what you want to use the card for.  The guy I responded to
ssid that he wanted to use it for recording.  Kernel drivers in general
suck big time for recording.  They're fine for games or mp3's, but for
anything more advanced than that, you should use alsa.  Kernel drivers
have crappy latency, and they don't support more than 2 channels very
well.
Not only that, but there are some pretty basic technical flaws on the
SBLive card.  For one thing, it's hard-wired to 48 khz, so any 44.1 khz
audio (the sampling rate of CD's), it gets resampled to 48, ad then back
44.1.  Sampling rate conversion inherently involves a loss in quality.
Not only that, but any outocming audio automatically gets routed to the
effects unit (which is only accessible through winblows) before it gets to
te output.  The effects chip only accepts an analog signal, which means
that your audio is getting converted to analog to get to te effects chip,
then back to digital by th fx chip itself, then back to digital, and
finally back to analog by the DAC.  Multiple D/A/D conversions - yuck!
The SBLive is a fine consumuer card - but tat's wat it is: a consumer
card.  If you want to do any kind of sound editing or recording, it's not
te best choice.  (I say this because I have one and have been disappointed
- especially when using non-alsa drivers.)
-dgm


On Thu, 6 Dec 2001, MICHAEL M DELANEY wrote:

> Well, as much as I hate creative (Aureal fan :), their open source drivers
> in the kernel have worked pretty well for me, I've never used alsa on it.
> I do know that their drivers don't support everything on the card, and 3d
> audio support has been promised for over a year without much progress, and
> when it is released, it will probally not be open source as well.
> Mike
>
> On Thu, 6 Dec 2001, DAVID G MATTHEWS wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > On Wed, 5 Dec 2001, Dave Neuer wrote:
> >
> > > Additionally, I plan to use the money to buy a Create
> > > Technology Live!Drive I for use with my SBLive! to
> > > assist w/ my home recording adventures.
> >
> > I wouldn't recommend an SBLive! for recording, with or without the live
> > drive.  I have an SBLive and have been disappointed. Also, alsa support
> > for the live drive is kind of sketchy, so if you're planning on doing your
> > recording under Linux, you may in for a surprise.  If you want a decent
> > cheap audio card that works well under Linux, the M-Audio and Terratec
> > cards have gotten pretty good comments on the Alsa and Linux Audio
> > Developers' lists.  These cards run around $150-200, and you have to order
> > them from a music dealer, rather tha a computer place.  (Check
> > www.musiciansfriend.com).  As for software, Ardour
> > (ardour.sourceforge.net) is now in a usable state.
> >
> > -dgm
> >
> > >If anyone has
> > > one of these and is interested in any of this stuff,
> > > let me know -- perhaps we can work out a deal.
> > >
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