PIII or Athlon, That is the question. Well Shakespeare, I'm here to tell you that in many cases it just doesn't make a damn bit of difference. I'll pull out some numbers in a moment, but the bottom line is that both the Intel PIII Coppermine and AMD's K7 Athlon make exceptional DAW CPUs. Lineage Since the birth of the PC DAW, Intel CPUs have been synonymous with top-performance and stability. Having no serious competition over a several year period, end users were forced (for better or worse) into a Wintel world. Windows applications were optimized and tested for use with Intel CPUs - and those Intel CPUs provided FPU (Floating-Point Unit) performance that was heads and shoulders above units from Cyrix and AMD. And so it was… Here and Now: Serious Competition After losing the FPU battle for years, AMD went back to the drawing board. The result is their K7 Athlon which packs some serious FPU muscle. Early reports of the Athlon having 2-3 times the FPU performance of an equally clocked PIII were...

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When working with digital audio, your system's analog-to-digital (A/D) and digital-to-analog (D/A) converters will ultimately determine the fidelity with which you can capture and play back audio. This is an area where many people getting started with digital audio get confused. "My converters are the latest 24/96 converters," they say. "Isn't 24/96 what I want?" Converters: What Goes In Must Come Out The simple fact is that not all converters are created equal. True, inexpensive 24-bit converters are improving all the time. True, many newer audio interfaces like MIDIMan's Delta 1010 provide very respectable performance (109dB dynamic range). True, for most purposes, this is more than adequate. However, if you wish to attain top performance, you'll have to go with a dedicated set of A/D D/A converters. So what's available? Many studio owners want world-class performance, but can't justify spending $3000 for a pair converters - especially when their existing converters are already pretty darned...

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Drum-roll please… Gadget Labs (http://www.gadgetlabs.com) redefined the standard of "More-for-Less" with their rock-solid Wave/4, so we've ALL been waiting for the scoop on this piece of gear. A 24-bit audio card with eight channels of balanced +4 analog I/O, built-in MIDI… and a MSRP of $499! Ladies and Gentlemen: I welcome you to the Overview/Review of Gadget Labs' Wave/8*24. Features · Full Length PCI card · Rackmount patchbox - connects to PCI card via included 2-meter cable · Eight channels of analog I/O (individually switchable between balanced/unbalanced, and +4/-10) via ¼" TRS connections… Channels 1&2 also feature XLR connectors. · Supports 8, 16, or 24Bit audio (When recording 16Bit audio, the Wave/8*24 samples at 24Bits and dithers down to 16Bits) · Supports the following Sample Rates: 11.025, 16, 22.05, 24, 32, 44.1, and 48kHz · Up to three Wave/8*24 cards can be clock-synced via internal connectors · Monitor incoming audio from the outputs...

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It's been a while since Frontier released the world's first Lightpipe audio card, the WaveCenter. Without much hype, the WaveCenter managed to establish itself as a solid ‘workhorse' digital multi I/O audio card… and quietly helped to usher in a new era in PC Audio. At last, PC DAWs could digitally record/transfer 8 simultaneous channels of audio! That was roughly two years ago. So what has Frontier Design Group been up to lately? Well, I can say this much, they've done their homework and have come up with a powerful new ‘modular' series of audio hardware. Dakota Dakota is Frontier Design Group's new PCI Lightpipe audio card that comes stock with the following features. Two Optical Lightpipe Input ports - providing 16 simultaneous channels of digital audio input (software switchable to Optical S/PDIF) Two Optical Lightpipe Output ports - providing 16 simultaneous channels of digital audio output (software switchable to Optical S/PDIF) Coaxial S/PDIF digital I/O - via an included breakout cable...

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A couple of months ago, I detailed Samplitude 2496 (from SEK'D). Since this DAW software supports 24Bit recording at Sample Rates up to 96kHz, and all major DAW software is soon to follow... it makes sense to also review the hardware side of a 24Bit 96kHz system. That brings us to this month's review of the Prodif 96 and the SEK'D 2496s A/D D/A converters (AKA the little guy). Prodif 96 - The Audio Card The Prodif 96 is a Stereo Digital I/O card that supports 24Bit recording at Sample Rates up to 96kHz. (To my knowledge, the Prodif 96 is currently the only card supporting Sample Rates up to 96kHz.) Features Short PCI card (one of the shortest I've seen) Plug and Play Bit Depths of 16/20/24 are all supported AES/EBU I/O via XLR connections (on breakout cable) S/PDIF I/O (optical) via Toslink S/PDIF I/O (electrical) via female RCA connections (on breakout cable) Onboard 20Bit analog D/A converters Supports professional and consumer digital formats Ignores SCMS copy protection Uses a single...

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About the reviewer: As many of you know, I'm currently writing the US manual for Samplitude 2496. I work closely with SEK'D as an independent contractor, but I'm not an employee. So… as a professional DAW user with quite a bit of experience with Samplitude Studio 4.0 and Samplitude 2496, I'll do my best to provide facts and opinions that are truthful and accurate. I'm calling this an Overview / Review because I've included a lot of technical information about the program. Projects - The DNA of an editing session Samplitude 2496 is unique in that it can record audio to hard disk or your system's RAM. 1. HARD DISK PROJECT: A recording made to hard disk is called an HDP (Hard Disk Project). In most cases, you'll want to record to hard disk due to the large storage requirements of digital audio. 2. RAM PROJECT: A recording made to your system's RAM is called an RAP (RAM Project). RAP recordings are useful for short segments of audio such as Impulse Responses (for use with the Room Simulator) or drum...

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One of the most exciting products to make headlines recently is the Yamaha DSP Factory DS2416. The Yamaha DS2416 offers the mixing power of the Yamaha 02R digital mixer, complete with 24 channels of digital mixing, on-board digital effects and dynamics processors -- along with everything else professionals need - plus 16 tracks of hard disk recording with up to 32 bit resolution. Unlike most other audio cards, the DS2416 relies on its own processing power and not the computer's CPU. This arrangement makes much better use of your existing hardware. DSP Factory equipped with 2 expansion bays

The feature list is impressive: - 24 channel, 32-bit digital mixer - 10 bus outputs and 6 aux sends - 104 bands of 4-band parametric EQ - 26 dynamics processors - 2 effect processors equal in quality to Yamaha's REV500 ...

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