Zalman External USB Sound Card - ZM-RSSC

shathal · Post by **shathal** » Wed Jun 09, 2004 1:54 pm

Zalman aren't the only ones who make them - I stumbled (flabbergasted) over some other USB-soundcards the other day.

I don't see the point, to be perfectly honest.

Maybe for the impressionable?

Post by **Rusty075** » Wed Jun 09, 2004 2:31 pm

Quality.

The "good" USB external boxes are shielded from the ugly electronic noise of the motherboard, and generally provide line-level outputs to connect to a pre-amp.

Note that the Zalman is not necessarily "good"

shathal · Post by **shathal** » Wed Jun 09, 2004 2:37 pm

I've sure as heck haven't any complains about my SB Audigy 2 ZS - so, PCI is fine by me

.

It's a little "fancy trendness" as far as I can see.

Edward Ng · Post by **Edward Ng** » Wed Jun 09, 2004 5:53 pm

Really depends on your sound quality demands...

I switched away from an Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro due to the resampling that occurs on the card (all signals must be resampled to 48KHz on the card itself because that's the only mode the DSP operates at); the Echo Mia MIDI allows full control over sampling rate, and I have it locked to 44.1, using foobar2000 with the kernel streaming output and then digital coax hook up to my DAC. All my music is encoded to lossless formats (60% Monkey's Audio, 39% FLAC, 1% Apple Lossless).

It takes good equipment to output quality high enough for there to be an audible difference, and the listener must also be able to detect the difference. 95% of people will be fine with a, "high," quality consumer grade sound card, anyway. Then there's 4% who will be happier with a, "high quality," external sound adapter with proper shielding. Finally there are the 1% like myself who are capable (or rather, prefer to appreciate) the difference of a 100% not-resampled, clean output to finer grade equipment.

I joined SPCR in the first place because of my desire to listen to high fidelity audio from a PC in a noiseless environment.

-Ed

PS Of course, on my gaming rig I use an Audigy 2 ZS; I believe only Creative cards support up to EAX 4...

wsc · Post by **wsc** » Wed Jun 09, 2004 8:08 pm

you sound very much like myself edward, only you have the budget for nice audio goodies

Edward Ng · Post by **Edward Ng** » Wed Jun 09, 2004 8:11 pm

Such are the perks of having a job but little or no bills to pay (living at home is a perk of being young, as well, hehe).

-Ed

wim · Post by **wim** » Wed Jun 09, 2004 9:55 pm

don't forget the 0.1% whose ears are so good they will buy a $750 power cable made of gold (for that super-ultra-high-quality placebo effect)

Nebor · Post by **Nebor** » Wed Jun 09, 2004 11:43 pm

wim wrote:don't forget the 0.1% whose ears are so good they will buy a $750 power cable made of gold (for that super-ultra-high-quality placebo effect)

The $750 power cables are only ok. The $2200 are much much better, with a better impedance to moron factor. Don't forget the $1200 circuit breakers.

CoolGav · Post by **CoolGav** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 12:46 am

I got into PCs both for typing up uni stuff, and really to make music. Once I could afford it I ditched the SoundBastard and similar consumer cards, and went out and got an original Echo Mia over 3 years ago. That is a great card for making music on. Since then I've expanded and got myself a Creamware Luna II which has some DSP power as well. These aren't by any means high end audio interfaces in the music tech world, but for PCI stereo I/O are pretty good. Yep, they're several times the price of a budget gamers card, but offer no gimmicks, better quaility, latency etc...

I wonder what the market is for the Zalman USB sound interface? I guess people with PCs that only have stereo out (not surround) who want to upgrade to surround and don't know so much about S/PDIF and PCI cards etc... Its certainly not a competitor to the Fraudigy.

And there are other USB audio interfaces, some with quite a lot of extra controls. And firewire is great for serious multi-channel stuff. Laptops are seeing major growth in uptake by musicians, and so they need external stuff to use...

Cerb · Post by **Cerb** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 4:38 pm

The Zalman one seems kind silly, save maybe for a mobile solution. If you're not making music or hearing noise in the PC, the best feature, by far, is having a volume knob within quick reach.

trodas · Post by **trodas** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 1:49 am

CoolGav - well, teh SPDIF is pretty useless thing, since more that 2 channels you can't pass trought it uncompressed...

And compression is far from being loseless, right?

Edward Ng - yea, Audigy2zs is a way to go. The first card (I tried Soudblaster5.1live, Audigy (1), Audigy2) sounds definitively better that all the rest I mentioned that just fall to the same "far from dynamic ritch music" category

However the issue with Creative are the damn drivers. One have to install the driver from CD and then do another two updates from DL files just to ge reasonable output.
I can't even comment it, unless I will use very much of the F-words and such...

The EAX4 is only available (if they did not do something, like 3rd update file

) for the online update center - a thing I never want into my computer for any cost

I hope that one day they made ONE INSTALL FILE that allow me to install latest drivers w/o problems together with essentila SurroundMixer and Aplifier control apps, and that is all

The resampling I believe was issue with the older audigy cards... But hey, 48kHz is normal sampling rate, 44.1 sounds worser a bit, when come to high pitches - and aditionaly, all I want is disabled all the "effects", so...

Im more or less happy with it