[Elecraft] sound card recommendations

[Don Wilhelm]

Rob,

You do not need a high quality soundcard to do AFSK or DATA A modes.  
Most any run-of-the-mill 16 bitt soundcard will do all that is 
required.  The signal to noise ratio with really el-cheapo cards may be 
a problem - ARRL reported on that a couple years ago in QST.
If you want to do wide-range music stuff or a computer based panadapter, 
that is a different story.
A compromise IMHO is the Creative Labs Soundblaster Live - it is a 24 
bit card with good S/N, and will do 96k wide on a panadapter display if 
you want.  I bought 3 of them several years ago, and cannot speak for 
the current availability.  As I recall, the Live was better in S/N than 
the Audigy.

73,
Don W3FPR

k6rb at baymoon.com wrote:
> My "shack" computer is an old Pentium machine running XP. It is more than
> up to providing stutter-free CW and responsive RTTY. Before, I had just a
> single (cheap) sound card that I put to use for SO1R RTTY. Now, with the
> two new K3s, and having used AFSK successfully, twice, I am planning to
> add a second sound card for radio 2. While I'm at it, though, I'm thinking
> it would be nice to have two sound cards that are highly thought of for
> ham-radio use. I have not used sound cards for SSB contesting purposes,
> but might want to try it now that I have one hooked up for AFSK. So, I
> would be looking for sound cards that work well. Any recommendations?
>
> Rob K6RB
>   
>