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 | | | | May31Written by:Rip Rowan
Monday, May 31, 1999 6:00 PM  I'm no technophobe. But, I don't like taking unnecessary chances.
Hey, I've been working with computers for 20 years now. I've learned my lessons the hard way. Like waiting for the first maintenance release before upgrading to a new version of ANY software. And letting a few people try something new before jumping in myself.
There's a reason they call it the "bleeding edge." You can get bled to death with new technology. It's a slow, painful death.
So I waited around until a few people had built their own PC DAWs before taking the plunge myself with an overclocked Celeron 300A and fast UDMA hard disks.
I've been really happy with my Celeron system. I get a solid 24 track playback, with a good amount of real time compression, EQ, reverb, and effects throw in. It's a great system, and I giggle when I realize that I only spent a little more on it than a lot of people spent on their Minidisc recorders.
I think my success with my low-cost DAW made me a little lightheaded. Emboldened by my new success out on the bleeding edge of DAW technology, I foolishly decided to take the plunge with a new soundcard.
My old soundcard, a trusty Digital Audio Labs Card D+ was excellent. It's really one of the best (maybe the best) 16-bit soundcards made. I was getting good sound out of it before, and now with a powerful computer, it was really humming.
But my needs were growing and I wanted to do more multitracking, and you know what that means. More I/Os.
There's really two choices when moving to a multi-I/O PC DAW rig. You can either get a lightpipe card and a set of converters or digital mixer. Or, you can get a multi-I/O soundcard. I decided optimistically to try out a multichannel soundcard.
Adventures in DAWorld
First off, I need to make note of my special system requirements. My computers (all three) are installed in a computer closet in the back of my control room. I love the dead silence in my control room, and the room is noticeably cooler without the computers. I live in Texas, and in the summer, every degree counts. So it is critical to me that I get a system that offers an external converter box that can be located at least 25 feet away from the computer.
I started with Layla. Layla's a good system. My dear friend Bruce Richardson has one, and I've heard it, and it sounds good. Moreover, it's packed with features - digital I/O, wordclock, MIDI, the works. For the money it's unstoppable.
Plus, my gut was telling me that because this soundcard had been available for almost a year now, surely the bugs had all been worked out.
So I picked one up and threw it into my system. Run the installer. All OK. I'm feeling optimistic!
I fire up the Layla control panel. Who designed this? The interface is poor, the meters are poor, and the whole thing is unnecessarily complex. This applet looks like something written for an Atari. That's OK, I don't really need the control panel once I get it set up right. Set it and forget it.
After fussing around with the control panel for a few minutes, it was working fine. Hey, this sounds good - the 20 bit converters were already making an audible difference in the recorded sound.
Until it died. All the outputs went dead, and the card changed input sample rates. The only way to get it to come back alive was to reboot.
Huh? I messed around with a few different software applications. Same crap. After a few minutes of use, the outputs go dead.
I was immediately suspicious of the 25-foot cable I was using with the Layla. But, I tried it with the 15-foot cable that is supplied with the unit with the same results. After a little bit of playback, the card's outputs go dead.
This never happens at Bruce's studio. He uses his Layla 7/24 and it's always flawless. I must have gotten a bum unit.
OK, I can deal with that.
I take the thing back and get another one. Deinstall the drivers so I can get a clean reinstall, and try again.
Same thing.
AAARRRRGH! OK, time for the big assault on the computer. Every peripheral card comes out, all the software is deinstalled. Run RegClean. Reinstall Layla. Reinstall software.
Same thing.
No WAY! Reinstall Windows. Reinstall software.
Same thing.
This is RIDICULOUS!
I kept it for about ten days. I was never able to make it work. Meanwhile time was just ticking away.
I was at a loss to find anyone who had the same experience with the soundcard. It was as if Layla was allergic to my computer.
Can't We All Just Get Along?
Finally, in an obscure newsgroup, I found a person who had sync / playback problems with Layla as a result of their video adapter. Turns out that the user had a Diamond AGP card (like mine) and switched to a Matrox AGP card (like Bruce's) and Layla started working OK.
This was too much. Hey folks, it's 1999. Can't our hardware just get along?
It was too late to return my video card, and I wasn't about to buy another one. I'm not married to Layla, and really, I don't want a piece of hardware that's prone to incompatibilities. Today it'll be my video card, tomorrow, my modem.
I can hear you Layla users now. "Layla's not unfriendly in your system - it's your video card that's at fault."
To which I reply: balderdash. Diamond sells a buttload of those cards, and Diamond is one of the largest video card manufacturers, and they use a standard (Intel) chipset. Lots of other soundcards and other hardware work fine with this video card. Just not Layla.
And, of course, I'm just assuming that the video card is at fault. I have no real proof. The bottom line for most users is: when hardware / software conflicts begin, you're on your own. In this market, the modus operandi is still caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware. I personally didn't have any more time to kill, and I gave up.
So Layla goes back, and I have to pick an alternative.
Well, I've been interested in the Gadget Labs Wave/8*24 for a while. But, it's early March, and the Wave/8*24 is still not shipping, so I'm skeptical of it. And I need something NOW.
Then there's the Yamaha DSP Factory. A good system, but also pricey. And the software isn't really all there yet. And, I was pretty skeptical of the drivebay-mounted I/O box, the AX44. How dorky. With my computer installed in a closet, I would have to run a lot of audio cable between my mixer and the AX44. I have no desire to subject my audio to a 30-foot unbalanced cable run. Maybe if the AX44 had balanced I/Os I would have given it a shot.
Big-Eared Mammals with Perfect Vision
I've heard good things about the Aardvark 20/20. Garry Simmons did a pretty positive review of it a few months ago, with only minimal complaints. I check out Aardvark's web site, and this system looks good. The main things that I want are all there: high-quality 20-bit external converters, Digital I/O, built-in MIDI. And the price is right: $600 (street).
So I get an Aardvark 20/20.
First off, when I get it home, the 3.5" installer disk is deceased. Dead dead deadsky.
No problem. Hop over to Aardvark's web site and download the new drivers, throw them on the floppy, install. It's WORKING!
I fire up the Aardvark 20/20 control panel. Hey, cool. It works. The control panel is a great feature of this card. Everything's very clear, the routing is very flexible, the metering is excellent, and I'm immediately in love with the 20/20.
Well, kind of. There's nowhere to pad the inputs. And, hey, wait a minute, these aren't +4 inputs, and I can't see where to change the input level from -10 to +4.
And, oh by the way, where are the MIDI ports?
Furious, I email an Aardvark representative. Why didn't I get the product they advertised on their web site?
Turns out that the product on their Web site is the Aardvark 20/20+. The new version. Which added balanced +4 I/O, TOSLINK optical I/O, and MIDI. The graphics still say 20/20. There's nowhere on the page that suggests that there was a previous version other than an inscrutable note deep down in the text.
What a ripoff. And the 20/20+ isn't yet available where I bought my unit. So I have to learn to like the 20/20 for a while.
Which I will admit, I did. Apart from the lack of +4 and MIDI, this is a great soundcard. For the money it's excellent.
But, my rig is +4, and I just can't drive the inputs quiet enough to get within range of the -10 inputs. This is suboptimal. And I've had to reinstall my Opcode MIDI Translator to get MIDI running again.
And now my MIDI sync is flaky.
I've used the Opcode MIDI Translator for two years with my Card D+ with ROCK-SOLID MIDI / Audio sync. I've got ample CPU horsepower. The software is set up right, and I've tried every option available.
The timing is not tight, and I'm blaming the 20/20.
I kept it for a few weeks to try to get some happiness from it, and I finally gave up. By now the 20/20+ had shipped, so I returned the 20/20 for a 20/20+. Not surprisingly, the 20/20+ was $200 more expensive than the 20/20. But, I was willing to pay the extra money to get online with a good system.
So, $800 later I was back in the studio installing the 20/20+. This time the installer didn't work and it installed as an Aardvark Direct - a different mammal altogether. Plug-and-Play being what it is, I had the damnedest time getting the soundcard installed - I finally had to disable the PNP in the computer's BIOS to get it installed.
After much mailing and gnashing of teeth it was installed and I was ready to give it a shot.
It didn't work. No audio in, no audio out.
After some troubleshooting I determined that it was the 25-foot parallel cable I was using. This cable had worked fine with the Layla and the 20/20. But not with the 20/20+. I tried several cables, always with different but inadequate results. One cable didn't give me any audio. Another one made the audio really loud and distorted. Yet another worked great on all but two input channels. None of the cables were damaged. It's just too long for the 20/20+.
Unfortunately, Aardvark doesn't support cables other than the 6-foot cable shipped with the unit. I'm out of luck. Back I go with the Aardvark 20/20+.
I have now lost at least a month of recording time. And I still don't have a multichannel I/O system. If my studio was a commercial operation instead of a small project studio, I'd be fired. Or out of business.
Catch the Wave
By this point, the Wave/8*24 was shipping. Curious, I decided to give it a shot.
The system arrived, and boy was I pissed.
Of course I wasn't in a particularly spiffy mood by this point in my adventure. Now I find out that Gadget Labs has used a parallel cable with female-female connectors. Layla and Aardvark use male-male straight-through (all pins connected) cables - a standard switchbox cable. Why not the Wave/8*24?
Fortunately and thankfully the folks at Gadget Labs sell a 7-meter parallel cable for the Wave/8*24. They are the only company I am aware of that will support a cable run this long and who actually sell a recommended cable. The extended cable was shipped to me quickly.
So now I install and start checking out the Wave/8*24.
To begin with, I have been pretty skeptical about the design of this system. The 824 has its converters installed on the PCI card, and passes the audio from the breakout box down the parallel cable to the computer. This just didn't seem like a good idea to me. I was pretty suspicious of the use of a 25-pin parallel cable for analog audio. Not to mention the idea of putting 24-bit converters inside a computer.
Use of the system was enough to change my mind. The Wave/8*24 - while not a strong competitor against expensive, high-end 24-bit converter systems - sounds noticeably better than the 16 bit and 20 bit converters in the CardD+, Layla, and Aardvark 20/20 and 20/20+. I was impressed with the cleanliness and power of the sound of the Wave/8*24.
Unfortunately, this one was not without problems either. I discovered that there is a compatibility issue between Cakewalk 8.x and the Wave/8*24. When playing back mixes that present a heavy CPU load, Cakewalk intermittently stops talking with the soundcard, causing the Wave/8*24 to stutter, flutter, and fail. Strangely, this problem only occurs on a few machines (mine) and under Cakewalk 8.x.
Thankfully, when the problem begins, it's very easy to make it stop temporarily, so I was finally able to start getting a little work done. Hopefully a software patch will soon fix this problem.
Usual Disclaimers Apply
I can already visualize the reader letters.
"Hey, jerkoff!" you'll write. "I bought that new soundcard based on your lovely review. Now you're telling me it doesn't work?" You're pissed. You close your letter, "Bite me!"
Each of the products covered in this editorial did receive good reviews. That is because, when the reviewers tried out the products, they worked. And worked well.
Bruce Richardson reviewed the Layla. I happen to know that Bruce's Layla rig gets a lot of use. It's worked great now for over a year. He loves it. That's why I started with it.
Jim Roseberry reviewed the Wave/8*24, and he loved it. He tried it on two different computers. Pete Leoni also uses a Wave/8*24, and has not had any problems with it either. Both of them use Cakewalk, like me. Both of them use overclocked Celeron computers with Maxtor drives, like me. But I had problems, and they didn't.
And Garry Simmons reviewed the Aardvark 20/20, and, like me, found it to be a solid buy with great performance. Perfect for him. Won't work for me because I can't use it with a 25-foot cable.
The fact is that all of these systems are great. They offer excellent price/performance ratios, with excellent features, excellent sound quality, and value-packed pricing. For most users they will work fine. But when it comes down to the question, "will THIS soundcard work in MY computer," the answer is a crapshoot. You can't know until you try it out.
Why do you think the major studios with money to burn still use ProTools?
Lessons Learned
I have learned a few lessons from my experience.
Your mileage may vary. Just because your buddy's system works doesn't mean you can buy the same gear and get the same results. The degree of interaction between CPUs, motherboards, memory, soundcards, and software is so complex that you simply cannot accurately predict performance based on system specifications.
Some assembly required. Each system has some design quirks that had to be overcome. On my system, Layla wouldn't work at all, Aardvark wouldn't work with a 25-foot cable, and Wave/8*24 wouldn't work with Cakewalk, or with a "standard" cable. We are still maybe a year or two away from a set of de facto standards for things like "how do external converters connect with PCI cards" and "which IRQ should soundcards default to?" and "what is the best block size for passing audio data to / from soundcards?" In the meantime - YOU are the systems integrator.
Be prepared to stop. You'll never know all the variables until you start installing. Do yourself a big favor. Plan to take your studio down for a lot longer than it ought to take. If you create a two-day window in your recording schedule, and the install takes three weeks, you'll be one angry character.
Safety in numbers. Don't count on the company's support personnel to help solve any potential problems. In the end I have been helped over and over again by newsgroups and e-mail lists. It pays to follow the crowd, because the crowd can help you out. Moreover, when a piece of software fails to work with a piece of hardware, it really helps if the offending product has enough market share to sufficiently motivate the other company to accommodate its peculiarities.
It's the MUSIC, stupid. In the end, this is all about making music. Your system might not have the latest, greatest 24-bit 96 KHz converters with the gold-plated connectors and a moon-rock needle. You can still get your work done, though. But if you try to upgrade to the new gear that has all those features you've been hyped up about, and your upgrade fails, forget it. You're dead in the water. Don't be a sheep to the marketing shepherds.Don't upgrade until the cost of not upgrading is significantly higher than the worst-case-cost of upgrading.
Now, get out there and make some art.
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