[RTTY] Sound Card Comparison (Soundmax On MoBo, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, and M-Audio Revolution)

[Robert McGwier]

On my personal server, you will find

http://n4hy.homelinux.net/Comparison.htm


for a few days.

It is one piece of data I am using for my upcoming QST article.

It contains the graphical treatment of a standard audio card
test suite output.  The worst of the lot (JUST SAY NO)
is the Soundmax onboard audio on my motherboard.  The best
thing I have currently connected is the M-Audio Revolution.
It is a good, not great, 24 bit sound card.  It should, and
does have, better noise floor, linearity, dynamic range than
the rest.  BUT, that is with the card running in 24 bit mode.
A lot of software, such as MMTTY, PSKCORE, and others do not
put the card into 24 bit mode even if it would support it.

The best of all the 16 bit cards I have tested is the Turtle
Beach Santa Cruz.  The SB Live looked about like the Soundmax
and I tossed it straight into the trash when I got the Turtle
Beach.

You are looking at frequency response, noise floor, dynamic range,
total harmonic distortion, and crosstalk between channels.

The two pictures on the main page,

http://n4hy.homelinux.net


are two of the Santa Cruz panels.  First is the input mixer panel
and the second is the output mixer panel.  The first makes it
clear that there is no mute on the input and line in and microphone
are the same control with two different plugs.  Internally, they
differ by an amplifier for the microphone.

I won't spend a tremendous time here explaining all of this until
the QST article appears.

Bob
N4HY