Re: sound card

[Michael Beck <mibeck@vassar.edu>]

[talking about SBLive's crappy converters and how to avoid resampling to 
48k]
>How I circumvented this problem
>(and avoided buying an expensive DAT machine in the process) was to buy a
>MidiMan FLYING COW  A/D/A converter that supports
>24/96 recording, SPDIF and has balanced stereo ins and outs.   It set me
>back about $350 as I remember and allows me to SPDIF everything in and out
>of the SoundBlaster live card thus (I hope I've figure out correctly)
>circumventing the SoundBlasters A/D/A converters all together.

    As far as I know, this doesn't really do as much as you would 
think. I mean, you are avoiding the converters, but the basic problem 
still exists: the SBLive card actually (re)samples *everything* to 
48KHz, even the digital inputs, regardless of the incoming frequency! 
Now, this may not make much of an audible difference the first time 
around, but keep doing it and a few generations from now you'll 
definitely hear it.
    What I've been told is that everything Creative makes is crap & to 
avoid it for real work. For more info check out the archives of the 
DAT-Heads Digest mailing list. YMMV & please correct if I'm wrong!

                                                    - Mike

P.S.- A real Leslie makes a sound like no other. When I first got my 
147 the world turned upside down. :) Drawbacks: it's frickin' HEAVY 
and needs to be run as loud as possible for that glassy crunchy 
overdriven thing. Only so much dist can be added in the preamp - a 
real Leslie power amp running full out is a beautiful sound to 
behold. Having said that, there are decent emulators. (Motion Sound 
comes to mind as a good non-digital alternative.) You don't *really* 
need the total effect all the time. Sure is cool, though :)...