Replacement for my M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card

[Dave46]

I had thought of that solution but it would be a lot of fiddling about and, as you say, may not work under W11.

You can buy PCIE (motherboard slot) to PCI Drive Bay adapters. These will go in the space where a DVD-ROM would go and take two PCI cards. The M-Audio AP2496 would then move to the front of the PC which is cool.

But, not sure if you could hack the Win Vista 64 drivers to continue working under W11. They do work under W10.

Coming back around to this, I found this adapter which is quite cool as it steps the PCI card back away from the rear of the case so you'd have room to connect the cables through the back as per usual. Only possible issue is that the card is not supported - maybe could bend one of the blanking plates 90 degrees and screw it upside down to the case so it projects back to the PCI card

PCI-e PCI Express to PCI Adapter Card Riser Extender 32bit Asmedia 1083 Chip | eBay

1 PCI-E To PCI Riser Card. This product converts the PCI-E interface on a computer into a separate 32-bit PCI interface. 2, support PCI 32-bit 33MHz bus 1 slot. This product can turn the PCIE 1X/4X/8X/16X interface into a PCIE interface to using PCI interface device.

www.ebay.com.au

 

[Blumlein 88]

I think you will be able to loopback, maybe with a small latency involved. First things first, see if you can get enough volume.

I don't know if it makes sense to spend $30 on an adapter for the M Audio that might work, vs putting that toward a Xonar card. But that is up to you to decide.

You also might look at SoundBlaster AE X5 cards. These are marketed as pro gamer sound cards. Have ASIO for recording and playback. Boast some rather incedible specs, but if they get close would be pretty good. A bit over your budget probably, but not terribly so. I'm not up on gamer sound cards, there might be better deals out there.

There is a SoundBlaster card in your budget. You might see what it costs in your part of the world.

Amazon.com

 

[Dave46]

I think you will be able to loopback, maybe with a small latency involved. First things first, see if you can get enough volume.

I don't know if it makes sense to spend $30 on an adapter for the M Audio that might work, vs putting that toward a Xonar card. But that is up to you to decide.

You also might look at SoundBlaster AE X5 cards. These are marketed as pro gamer sound cards. Have ASIO for recording and playback. Boast some rather incedible specs, but if they get close would be pretty good. A bit over your budget probably, but not terribly so. I'm not up on gamer sound cards, there might be better deals out there.

There is a SoundBlaster card in your budget. You might see what it costs in your part of the world.

Amazon.com

Well, I guess I may get forced down the Soundblaster / Xonar route. The thing about all these devices is they give 7.1 surround sound etc and all I want is simple, decent quality stereo! I could live with an external USB device if it was simple - line in and line out, like the Behringer UCA 202/222 but they got pretty scathing reviews. So, something that simple but decent quality??

Maybe the Scarlett Solo 3rd Gen?

 

[audio_tony]

Asus Xonar Essence STX or Asus Xonar DX - both excellent cards (with equally good A/D converters) and the DX can usually be picked up quite cheaply.

Be aware that the DX came in PCI and PCIe flavours.

Both cards can do stereo perfectly well, especially the Essence.

 

[AnalogSteph]

Be warned that soundcards using either PCIe-PCI bridges or buggy old (ASMedia) USB controllers can give you all kinds of grief, from an inability to cope with 64-bit addressing (which is a problem on Asus boards as you cannot turn that on per slot) to sabotaging PCIe ASPM. That's a lot of 'em. I ultimately ditched the Xonar SE that I had intended to be using in my new (Z590) system and went with onboard instead, which thankfully was an ALC1200 at least. Less of a headache and substantially less power consumption.

In this situation I might give a Creative SB Audigy FX V2 or Z SE a shot, just make sure to disable all the effects that they like to turn on by default. They're about the only manufacturer with a native PCIe HDA controller / DSP. Otherwise you're likely better off in the USB department. It's kind of an unfortunate situation.

It may be possible to hack some of the numerous cards that are internally USB-based, rerouting their USB inputs to a cable going to an internal USB 2.0 or 3.0 header instead. Not sure how tricky this would be though. I do have to wonder why nobody makes a card that does just that out of the factory.

 

[Dave46]

Be warned that soundcards using either PCIe-PCI bridges or buggy old (ASMedia) USB controllers can give you all kinds of grief, from an inability to cope with 64-bit addressing (which is a problem on Asus boards as you cannot turn that on per slot) to sabotaging PCIe ASPM. That's a lot of 'em. I ultimately ditched the Xonar SE that I had intended to be using in my new (Z590) system and went with onboard instead, which thankfully was an ALC1200 at least. Less of a headache and substantially less power consumption.

In this situation I might give a Creative SB Audigy FX V2 or Z SE a shot, just make sure to disable all the effects that they like to turn on by default. They're about the only manufacturer with a native PCIe HDA controller / DSP. Otherwise you're likely better off in the USB department. It's kind of an unfortunate situation.

It may be possible to hack some of the numerous cards that are internally USB-based, rerouting their USB inputs to a cable going to an internal USB 2.0 or 3.0 header instead. Not sure how tricky this would be though. I do have to wonder why nobody makes a card that does just that out of the factory.

Thanks for the reply,
Re the sound cards, if I go that way, I’d be leaning towards the Soundblaster, didn’t know the details you provided but had read of issues with the Xonar cards.

Did a bit of searching and found the onboard audio for the motherboard is ALC 897 which I’m guessing is not the best.

The 2SB Audigy cards, I can get here in Aus: the FX V2 is AU$90 and the Z SE is AU$125. Or there’s the Scarlett Solo 3rd gen if I want to go external, not sure of the reviews on this one but other Scarlett gear seems to be well rated.

 

[Dave46]

The settings aren't really different in Windows 11 once you get into that part of things. You may simply need to up volume in the Sound mixer or engage a boost using the line input as if it were a microphone. With the 5 kohm output impedance of the Quad 33 it may be interacting with what may be a low input impedance for line level which is dropping the sound level quite a bit. Enough so you might actually get more sound level switching the output of the Quad to medium level because it has only 800 ohms output impedance. But first check the sound settings in Windows.

https://www.howtogeek.com/749508/how-to-choose-your-microphone-on-windows-11/

Got back to testing on the old/current PC's on board sound - took your advice set the /Quad settings to medium and got a decent signal from the line in .
I must say it sounds pretty good, I looked up the audio specs for the current MoBo (Gigabyte GA-H170-Gaming 3) and it's
Sound Blaster X-Fi MB5+ALC 1220 120dB SNR HD Audio
Which I suspect is better than the ALC 897 on the new motherboard , if so I'll be definitely going backwards unless I get a sound card?

 

[AnalogSteph]

Which I suspect is better than the ALC 897 on the new motherboard , if so I'll be definitely going backwards unless I get a sound card?

It's technically a step down, but the converters still are fine for consumer line-level I/O, certainly with the equipment you have. It appears that there is no substantial digital filter ripple, and you should be fine at either 48, 96 or 192 kHz (recording at 44.1 is not recommended on consumer ADCs anyway).

 

[Dave46]

It's technically a step down, but the converters still are fine for consumer line-level I/O, certainly with the equipment you have. It appears that there is no substantial digital filter ripple, and you should be fine at either 48, 96 or 192 kHz (recording at 44.1 is not recommended on consumer ADCs anyway).

Steph, thanks for that, it’s reassuring and“the equipment I have” would include my ears, which have definitely seen better days . And, having achieved a workable setup with the current motherboard sound, I’ll go ahead and build the new PC and go with the on board initially and possibly for ever.

once I’ve got it working, I’ll sell the old stuff on eBay, I’ve see the Audiophile card on there for anything from mid AU$100 upto as much as $400, although I suspect the higher price could be a tad optimistic

 

[AnalogSteph]

Steph, thanks for that, it’s reassuring and“the equipment I have” would include my ears, which have definitely seen better days .

Well, yeah, that's another factor obviously...

In any case, we're talking a dynamic range of approximately 102 dB(A) on the DAC and 99 dB(A) on the ADC side with distortion below 0.003% (dominant H2 and basically constant across the audible spectrum), THD+N maybe a tad higher... by the standard of 1970s equipment, that's absolutely splendid. It can't hit CD player levels (maxing out a bit over 1 Vrms), but if memory serves a Quad 33 doesn't particularly fancy high input levels anyway.

For grins, I subjected a simulation of the emitter follower at the 33's input to 1 Vrms, which gave me a THD of a good 0.04% - more than an order of magnitude worse. (Honestly that circuit is pretty generic textbook and you could tweak the values of its bias resistors for better performance. Roughly halving the distortion is entirely realistic when swapping R215+R216 / R203+R204 from 220k / 220k to 150k-180k / 330k, respectively. I went by the schematic for units with S/N above 11500 that's available on HFE, earlier ones might be different.)

Recording from the Quad 33 is always going to be a bit quiet since even the higher output level setting applies almost 14 dB of attenuation, no doubt trying to accommodate the tape recorder (microphone-level) inputs of its day. You can try running that into the microphone input while enabling the 10 dB input amplifier gain step (maybe even 20 dB). (Note, the input volume slider tends to be set to the equivalent of +6 dB by default, so you can recover a bit of headroom there if clipping becomes a problem. Do you know the %/dB toggle trick for the sound device properties dialog?)
Alternatively, if you have one source that's getting recorded more than the rest, you could plug that into the line-in directly. A splitter cable may prove helpful if you want to be able to listen and record at the same time. That being said, I can't imagine any classic analog source that would actually be limited in performance by this emitter follower (neither vinyl nor tape or FM), and you obviously shouldn't be recording digital sources this way to begin with.