Technical Project in the works…
Hi Guys:
I’ve installed the second S/B Audio Card in this P-111 Computer, I have…
The audio card I’ve been useing in this sysyem, sense it was built , has been a S/B Live 16-Bit… 5.1 card. Yesterday, I bought a S/B Live 24-Bit 7.1 6.1 5.1 Card, and have it installed and working with the Computer’s Device Manager and n-Track, with no apparent conflicts, as yet…
The box that the S/B 24-bit card comes in, says, it’s use is for Xp and 2000 Operating systems… But however, My operating system is '98SE…
My Hardware setup is…
ASUS CuSL2c 815 chip-set Main Board with Intel 1.2 mhz Processor with 512 meg. ram… ATI AIW 128 Pro Graphics Card… StarTech 10/100 Network Card USB Rev 2.0 Expander Card, StarTech Promise-T Raid Card, 56 K A-Open Modem, With the Two S/B Live Audio cards… All the PCI and AGP ports on the Main Board are occupied… I use a EnerMax 365 watt PowerSupply for the computer… I have 6 Hard Drives a CD and DVD burners with 3.5" floppy installed, as well… Every Main Port is filled up and operating, except One Ram Port…
n-Track sees the two audio cards as operating on either of the Inputs…or… Outputs and can be selectable in the Settings > Preferences > Audio Devices… Four Input Meters and Four Output Meters… I’ve called onto the Time-Line a current Work-in-Progress, project and I am able to choose which track to route it’s signal, to,… As well, Four Input Meters appear, to select a choice of audio card’s inputs…
I’m in the process of Manufactuering an audio track with the 24-bit card to see if in fact the bit depth is 24-bits, and, the track will sync and repro with the original tracks that were recorded with the 16-bit card… and continue-in-sync through the length of the recording, with regards to Sampeling Rate… That’s the next obsticle to overcome…
The S/B Live 24-bit Card has no Synth Capabilities… It appears to be an analogue/digital audio card, only… with Line/Mic inputs and Analogue/Digital outputs… only…
The Clock Chips are different frequencies, on each card… the 16-bit card, being 24.000 mhz and the 24-bit card being, 24.xxx, or at a higher frequency… That could present an issue, for sync-alignment… We’ll see… This was discussed some time ago, with Mac, on this Board… I think, there are “Work-Arounds” for that issue… If that situation lends, itself… 
I’m working on this project for the 16/24-bit … 4-Track Capibiltities/Alturnativies that could be available useing both these Audio Cards in a DAW…
This is for the Technical Challange part of the project… We’ll see… 
Bill…
Hi All:
I’ve recorded a 24-bit track on the Time-Line with a 16-bit track and observed a progressive change to the sync of the two tracks… I confirmed the Bit-Depth of the two tracks by checking the “Properties” of the two tracks… The S/B 24-bit Live audio card, do in fact record 24-bit reselution, Tracks… as n-Track reports the two files to be different in Reselution…
Is the “Fix” for this issue corrected by connecting the SPDIF jacks, of the two cards, together?
Bill…
Hi Bill
Well done for getting this far… I never manged to get to SB cards to work in my PC using the Windows/Creative drivers. I guess your 24bit card is some different variant of SB to the operating system.
I did an experiment with two Live’s in a single PC, a couple of years ago. I had to use the KX drivers to get both cards to work, and I too had sync problems.
The reason for sync problems between two cards is that, although they both have extremely accurate clocks, (generated from the crystal usually), over a few minutes they may drift by a few milliseconds. Crystals inherently have a tolerance and therefore their clocks are very slightly differently. Over time (in your case a few minutes) the acculation of the slight difference becomes noticeable. (Whilst most of us won’t notice that our favourite MP3 song is 3ms shorter than it should be, our ears and brain notice a few milliseconds difference in audio.)
The card manufacturers could use better quality clocks/crystals but in the end it’s a trade-off between accuracy and cost… and most SB cards are used for gaming and not the kind of experiments we are doing.
However, even the most accurate clocks will exhibit some drift (we might just have to wait longer to see it), so the only surefire way to get sync’d audio is to get the two cards to use the same clock source. Now, on some higher-end cards this can be done… and one of the ways is to use SPDIF to join the cards together. Then what happens is that one card slaves it’s clock to the other (master), and the clock is transmitted by SMTP. However, as far as I am aware, you can’t do this with SB type cards because they just don’t support it…
So what can you do?..
Well, Mac’s suggestion, if I remember it correctly, was to remove the crystal on one card, and physically connect the crystal of the other card using a short bit of coax… so both cards now use the same crystal. This in theory should work but high-frequency signals like clocks are very susceptible to changes in their environment. ie could be upset by the introduction of a piece of cable, or the need to drive the additional circuitry of the 2nd card. Also… this will only work if both cards use exactly the same crystal frequency, which your cards don’t. So no-go with this one. (Incidently, the differences in the crystal frequencies is not the cause of your drift. Just different ways of getting what is needed for audio clocks).
However, there may be another way. My experiments were using the KX drivers which allow you to record from the 2 analogue inputs, AND the SPDIF input, at the same time (ie 4 inputs on one card. So, what you can do is use the 2nd soundcard as a kind of analogue to SPDIF convertor to feed another two analogue inputs (via our “convertor”) to the SPDIF input of the cards we are using to record. To do this your need to connect the SPDIF output (of our “convertor” card) to the SDPIF input of our “recording” card.
I managed to get this to work quite sucessfully. (Depending on the hardware on your card you may need to get handy with a soldering iron to get to the SPDIF signals). What I did find is that there is a very small, FIXED, latency (a few nanoseconds) between the two cards caused (probably) bu the signal’s travel through the “convertor” card. Remember that this was using the KX drivers.
And then I bought a Delta 44 !
HTH
Mark
Thanks Mark A:
Your report is well written. I think I see the concept of connecting the cards to sync up, from your report… I’ll plug away at this issue a little more… But I have produced a small product improvment, in the end result of doing this… I can now record 24-bit depth tracks on this Editing Station… without haveing to go to the studio and then back to the Editing Station… It removes two steps, in the End Product… Well, not all the time… But, in the sense of Creativity, it’s gonna help, I think…
The S/B Live 16-bit leaves me with MIDI function… The S/B Live 24-bit lives me with Record at 24-bit function… on a P-111 '98SE system… even if the two cards don’t sync up… Well…
I might “DOG” at this some more, before I move on, though… 
For the cost of the card I couldn’t leave it on the Store Shelf… The two cards are installed on ajacent PCI Slots on this mainboard… I think I just might remove a crystal from one of the boards and place a twisted pair of wire into the board that has the clock removed… and take it for a “Spin”… It so happens that the card with the higher clock frequency is below the card with the higher frequency, from the physical, standpoint… So, haveing said that, the S/B Live 16-bit card will have it’s clock removed and will “See” the clock frequency of the 24-bit card… That frequency being 24.xxx, or the higher clock… Well, we’ll see…
To get those two drivers to reside together I removed the 16-bit card from it’s slot and “Booted” the Box… The Post-up reported the ESCD and continued to the Desk… Then I installed the 24-bit card into the slot that it was gonna reside in and Rebooted… The post-up reported the updated ESCD and then I install the drivers only from S/B, by going on-Line and updating the drivers from S/B Downloads… At this point the Device Manager only reported the 24-bit card and drivers… Then, I Hard-booted and installed the 16-bit card back into the slot that it originally came from… When I Re-booted, the post-up reported the ESCD update and the Device Manager reported both cards and drivers… When I open the MS Mixer on the Task-Bar I only have the “Old” mixer… But, I have a choice of which card I want to con’fig… In both the Record or Playback… N-Track reports both audio cards with WDM drivers… One being WDM S/B Live Audio and the other being S/B Live 24-bit WDM device… However, the 24-bit card can be config’ed to operate in 16 or 24 bit res. as reported on n-Track’s time-line Track Properties…I have the choice of directing the Track’s output to either Card’s output… But not both… But, there are four outputs reported… There is a cavit there…though… I haven’t looked at n-Track’s Group Output, yet… I then have the choice of Captuering audio to any of the Card’s inputs… as reported by n-Track…
I’m still Dogg’in at it… I haven’t given up yet… Or, said Uncle…
Bill…