M-Audio Delta 44

[John-Summers]

Just bought a new computer. An HP with Windows Vista 64 bit, more RAM, bigger hard drive than my old one. I had been using an M-Audio Delta 44 sound card that connected to a PCI slot. Opened the new machine to install the card and found...no PCI slots. Instead there was something called a PCI Express slot, with which the card is incompatible. I don't know a lot about computers and it never would have occured to me that PCI slots were no longer available. So now what do I do? Does M-Audio offer any kind of adapter or upgrade? I haven't been able to find out. Anyone else encounter this?

I also found that a lot of my previous applications, including Adobe Audition, will not function with a 64 bit operating system. Is the newest version of Audition compatible? If a simple upgrade is all I need, then I'm fine with it.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

I have an M-Audio Audiophile card sitting here idle. I bought a new computer 18 months ago and it has PCI slots, but the M-Audio and the built-in on-the-motherboard sound card would not play nice. I did a lot of e-mailing and phone calling and had everyone involved point the finger at the other guy or someone else.

I found that the built-in card seemed to meet all my needs so I use it. (I tried to disable it to the point that the Audiophile would pretend it wasn't there but I never learned the secret of getting that done.

At that time there may have been one sound card ready for PCI-Express... or maybe it was still on the way. It was going to be one of the high-dollars cards which I cannot justify.

In my research and conversation I came to the conclusion that PCI-Express may be great for graphics and other computational heavy devices, but it may be a shot right through the toe of our cowboy boots when it comes to audio. Part of the philosophy of the PCI-Express is to bypass the real-time hang-ups of traffic on the tradtional buss, and deliver train-loads of data to the Express connected items very quickly. Then go catch up on business on the main/traditional buss and then another train-load of fast data via the Express buss. Everything I read (which tended to be just a little bit over my head) told me that keeping latency low and keeping a timing clock in the picture was not going to be friendly with the PCI-Express. Just manufacturing a sound card that will physically fit the PCI-Express connection does not mean the sound card is going to be happy sorting through the motor-scooter loads of data on one buss and the fast trainloads of data on the other buss.

SIDE NOTE.

Go to sleep for a month or two and you really get behind in this computer world. I keep a non-critical computer available for my wife to use. Hers was nearing 10 years in age and was becoming problematic. I bought a tiny "net-book" and hooked it up to her nice monitor. No printer port on the net-book. I can fix that. We have a home network so I will buy a network printer server. What I discovered upon waking: They make NO parallel port printers any more, thus it is almost impossible to buy a printer server with parallel output. Found one with wrong gender/wrong format parallel output. Took two printer cables and two gender-benders to get it connected. I almost ended up spending as much to connect an older laser printer to her computer and I spent on the computer itself!

 

[SirRoxalot]

USB to Parallel Converters

There's an easier way to connect to an old parallel printer. USB to parallel converters are plentiful and cheap, starting under $10.00.

Here's an example from Tiger Direct.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

I was determined to bring something home from THE STORE that day, wrap up the project, and get on with other items on my to-do list. I didn't find any of those devices available in stores in the Atlanta area.

Don't know that I would have bought the USB device if I had found it. (Maybe to get by until a long term solution arrived by mail.) I wanted to printer directly connected to the network so the other computer elsewhere in the house could print to that laser even if the newly installed laptop was off. It was these network devices that insisted on output of a 1284 plug rather than a DB-25 female plug.

The reason for even bringing up the printer was to point out that for those of us who for home use may only buy something significant every two to three years, long cherished connections and protocols do change and leave you high and dry unexpectedly.

I am surprised no one has any further advice and news on whether the sound card world is not providing some choices in Pro-sumer and Pro grade sound cards that will work with the PCI-Express.

 

[SirRoxalot]

It appears that more and more people are either happy with on-board sound cards - which are much better and much quieter that earlier plug-in cards - or are going outboard with USB 2.x or Firewire devices. Outboard devices are more portable, and better shielded against noise than the older sound cards were. They also can have more space for full-sized connectors than you can fit in a slot, without having to resort to extension cables or spiders.

Audio is a relatively easily task for a modern computer. The number of clock cycles required for even high bit-rate sampling is peanuts compared to video. The biggest advantage to using USB or Firewire is that there's a controller with direct bus access to memory and CPU that will act as an intermediary and get higher priority than even a PCI-Express card. Firewire can even write directly to storage without even involving the CPU, and can distribute audio from an input to multiple devices on the Firewire bus simultaneously.

There are potential problems if you have a LOT of USB or Firewire devices plugged in. Devices are assigned priority as they're plugged in, so you want your audio interface to be one of the first devices plugged in. Even at that, most modern computers can handle the load.

BTW, it's easier to find a USB print server for your network these days than it is to find a parallel print server. Got one recently for under $20.00 from buy.com. And, I agree, there are very few decent computers stores left. Electronics stores just don't have a very wide selection, and prices ain't cheap.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Thanks for the observations on changes in the world of computer sound cards and sound attachments.

I suspect there are still dents in the wall where I lived 15 years ago and I was trying to squeeze some decent recording abilities out of my very first Sound Blaster.

BTW, it's easier to find a USB print server for your network these days than it is to find a parallel print server. Got one recently for under $20.00 from buy.com. And, I agree, there are very few decent computers stores left. Electronics stores just don't have a very wide selection, and prices ain't cheap.

In some ways I might have been better off just buying a new printer with networking built in. (wired or wireless. At the locations this printer sits I could easily have gone either way.) The current printer will only accept parallel connection. USB would not get the job done.

It's a slightly older CAST-IRON HP LaserJet that has good paper handling habits. This one is not THAT old, but remember back when the HPII and HPIII made claims that they would accept paper as small as a business card! Mine won't do that but it will print on wallet-style personal checks with near perfect registration. Try that on some of the newer small HP printers.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Old Dog, New Tricks

I feel your pain. You're talkin' to a guy with a old, big-ass HP 4000T - the big one with an extra tray. It's parallel, and working happily on the network with a USB print server and USB-to-Parallel converter. Total cost? About $30 - way less than either an HP DirectJet interface. or a cartridge for a cheap inkjet printer. BTW, I wouldn't give up that printer for most of the current junk out there.