[CQ-Contest] Quality of Sound Cards?

[K4RO Kirk Pickering]

Are you certain that the recordings were made at the same 
sample rate (measured in kHz) and word size (8-bit vs. 
16-bit?)  Different soundcards can exhibit different default 
settings, depending primarily on the driver behavior.

If the sample and word size are the same, then it might 
be a driver issue, or simply a crummy sound card. I've 
been recently trying more phone contesting, using N1MM 
and a soundcard.  I could never get decent audio out of 
a Dell Inspiron 5000 with an ESS Maestro 2E integrated
soundcard.  The newest drivers made no difference. The 
audio was terrible no matter what I tried, and I do a lot 
of (music) digital audio recoding and editing every day.

My newest computer is a Intel PERL865 Mobo with an integrated 
SoundMax audio chip set. I've had no problems getting the 
SoundMax audio to work with N1MM Logger. I guess some sound
cards and chip sets work better than other for contest audio.

73

-Kirk  K4RO