Stereo Tool

I have a 4U Rackmount PC which we have build for Stereo Tool:

ASUS P8Z77-V-PRO Motherboard
Intel i7 3770K CPU
Realtek ALC892 Onboard Sound

I now have 2 x ESI Juli@ XTe cards and 2 x M-Audio 192 Audiophile cards.

To what extend can I mix these cards with the Realtek onboard to use as either input or output sources?

I am preparing to do another "show and tell" at the next local Tech's Day and I want to make sure we'll never talk about buffer settings again.

I am hoping to run FM Out with SCA1 and SCA2. If that runs stable we might try our luck with RDS.

Any advice will be welcome to show-off this great software (including to our own $$$$ Controllers).

Thanks,
Clipper

Hi Clipper,

SCA2 probably won't work (it's at an extremely high frequency which nearly no sound card would be able to reach). SCA1 should be ok though, on most cards.

If you use different sound cards for input and output, if possible connect the clocks (ie. the 2 Juli@'s can probably be connected to use the same clock), otherwise you might get buffer under- or overflows (not immediately but after many hours or even days). In Stereo Tool you can synchronize the input to the output (it's under the input sound card settings), but that assumes that you use the same sound card for all the outputs - and it doesn't support SCA yet (which means that that should come from the same sound card that you send the output to, if possible).

Anyway, by using different sound cards you also make it impossible to use ASIO, and hence you get much more latency. Doesn't have to be bad, just mentioning it.

So, basically, for a difficult setup like this, test it properly first!

@ Clipper
Just to say.. SCA 1 and 2 in ST are maybe not what you think they are.

Hi Hans,
Maybe my understanding of it is incorrect but I thought that was why we had to use 192KHz cards to allow for the 92 KHz (x2 = 184KHz).

I can lock them to the station's master clock generator and that should keep them all together.

So that is what that setting is about. If I use both Juli@ cards locked together that should allow me to have enough inputs and outputs to cover my requirements.

At this stage latency doesn't bother me. I'll fine tune that when I am happy I have the setup stable.

Definately, and for next next few weeks.


Hi Bojcha, Do you mean SCA 2 is not the 92kHz version of SCA 1 at 67kHz? If not, what is SCA 2?

Regards,
Clipper

It is, i thought you need it for external RDS.

It's actually 92 +/- 7, so 85-99. To fix that I'm using SSB encoding here (which is NOT specified anywhere but it's the only way to do it with a sound card). But still, 92 is SO close to 96, you can be sure that the lowpass filter in the soundcard will be very active at this frequency and will do bad things to it.

I would be very interested in test results though