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What was your first audio interface?


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10 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

Yamaha SW1000XG - biggest waste of money ever.    I was pretty ignorant about buying soundcards and thought it would compliment my Yamaha portable keyboard.  Newer chipset made it obsolete during the XP era.  Yamaha is the king of doorstops .   [....]

 

Both the DS2416 and the SW1000XG share the same set of drivers, so they will actually work right the way through to (and including) Windows 7 32 bit.

The issue is that in Yamaha's infinite wisdom, they designed the cards so they require both the 3.3v and 5v inputs on a PCI 1.0 slot. The vast majority of motherboards dropped the 5v, so choosing the right motherboard became paramount if you wanted to keep using them. There was also as you say, chipset issues with PCI 1.0 emulation.

That's the main reason I still use a 3rd gen i5 - my Asus motherboard has the last chipset that doesn't emulate PCI 1.0 (it's native), and also supports 5v in the PCI slots.

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9 hours ago, Christian Jones said:

How did that Onyx work for you? I never owned one but I followed for a while the nightmare w/ the drivers that a lot of people were having on Mackie's forum back then. I don't know the percentage of people who had issues vs those that didn't, but there seemed to be a quite a few. I did almost buy one of those Mackie Onyx mixers that had the interface built in. 

It always worked really well for me. I liked using it, and the Firewire card functioned without any undue problems. I made a point of using a Firewire add-in card in my PC that featured a Texas Instruments chipset -- I recall that a lot of the issues surrounding the Mackie Firewire drivers related to chipsets from other manufacturers, which caused problems. A chipset from TI was the suggested solution, and it always worked for me.  I still have the mixer, as the preamps are perfectly useable, and it's a nice piece of gear, overall. 

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1 hour ago, Mitch_I said:

Only one other Turtle Beach owner? Mine had RAM to load in samples for sample-based soft synths. Unfortunately, it loaded them in at MIDI speed. I used that feature twice.

Well, I count three with you (including me and Keni).

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9 hours ago, msmcleod said:

Both the DS2416 and the SW1000XG share the same set of drivers, so they will actually work right the way through to (and including) Windows 7 32 bit.

The issue is that in Yamaha's infinite wisdom, they designed the cards so they require both the 3.3v and 5v inputs on a PCI 1.0 slot. The vast majority of motherboards dropped the 5v, so choosing the right motherboard became paramount if you wanted to keep using them. There was also as you say, chipset issues with PCI 1.0 emulation.

That's the main reason I still use a 3rd gen i5 - my Asus motherboard has the last chipset that doesn't emulate PCI 1.0 (it's native), and also supports 5v in the PCI slots.

The SW had issues with chipsets.  It wouldn't run on nForce and I couldn't get it to run on Intel 900 series.

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21 hours ago, msmcleod said:

Well, if we're including them then....

image.png.0d52f04b78064fe23a9f95206e893389.png

...which was only EVER any use with the battery pack, because of a constant mains hum with the PSU.

Followed by: 

image.png.84b515f9b521460047641f9bf1c80f20.png

Then finally....

image.png.d4de8bae1022686a965f7c17ac9a5175.png + image.png.43e9bc57f3a762b074afd5afc324c3d0.png

I had the MT1X. I loved that thing.

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Since the OP asked which audio interface, I won't go back to the prehistoric 4-track analog tape recorder days.

My first audio interface was an Echo Layla 24/96. When the headphone volume pot got staticy, I bought a new one, Echo Layla 3G and that's what I use today.

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The first time I produced any audio on a computer there was no sound card involved, just the built-in speaker of the Apple ][. I had some software that could encode audio using pulse-width modulation, a very clever way to make the primitive off/on gated speaker do more than just beep. The audio was barely recognizable, but immense fun nevertheless. A computer game called Castle Wolfenstein utilized the trick to add voices to the game.

A couple years later, I bought a rather expensive synthesizer card called an Adlib. I couldn't do much with it, although at least one computer game, King's Quest, could use it for background music.

Next investment was an 8-bit Soundblaster, mainly because it had a lot of support with computer games.

I was recording through all those years, but to a 4-track reel-to-reel. The computer played no part in the process beyond displaying lyric cue sheets. Until 1988, when Cakewalk 1.0 let me create elaborate MIDI sequences and mixes. Even though that was a world-changer, I gave up recording for a long time in order to become a full-time workaholic.

Plunging into work had its rewards, some financial but others not as welcome. Such as my first heart attack in 2005. That forced a drastic realignment of priorities, including bringing music back into my life. I reckoned Cakewalk had probably continued to improve their product, so looked them up and discovered SONAR. I ordered SONAR 5 Power Studio from Sweetwater because it came bundled with a Roland interface. That thing was pretty awful, to be honest. Fortunately, it just stopped working one day, forcing an upgrade (MOTO 828). 

 

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Korg 1212 I/O.  I had an ADAT and that card had a control port for it as well as an optical port.

I had a local computer store build a bleeding-edge Pentium 4 machine around it. The whole setup cost over $7K. Korg stopped supporting that card about a week after I got the computer home but it worked well so it wasn't a problem. A year or so later I bought a second ADAT and a BRC so I pulled out the Korg  card and installed a card By Sonorus that had 2 ADAT optical ports. I used that rig for several years and while it is currently gathering dust in my dinosaur exhibit, it still works.

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2 hours ago, Leadfoot said:

That's awesome! Brings back memories.... Nothing better than listening to one of your favorite songs on 8 track, and having it change programs right in the middle of it.😂

I only had two 8-track tapes.  Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Heart's Dreamboat Annie.  Right in the middle of, arguably, the most popular Heart song, Crazy On You, the song fades out, you hear it click to the next track, and then the song fades back in!  Are you kidding me??!  Doh-headslap.gif

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1 hour ago, craigb said:

I only had two 8-track tapes.  Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Heart's Dreamboat Annie.  Right in the middle of, arguably, the most popular Heart song, Crazy On You, the song fades out, you hear it click to the next track, and then the song fades back in!  Are you kidding me??!  Doh-headslap.gif

That's funny. I wish Heart would of done more acoustic songs.

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