[Elecraft] External sound cards

[Jim Brown]

On 3/13/2014 6:46 AM, Joe Subich, W4TV wrote:
> K9YC will point you to a couple of MIDI boxes from TASCAM and Numark 

To expand on that, my testing and use is with XP Pro, and my focus was 
for I/O for use with RTTY, JT65, and other digital modes. BTW -- the 
boxes I've tested and use are USB, not MIDI. I studied the semi-pro 
audio market, bought simple stereo adapters from Numark and Tascam.  
Both use generic XP Drivers, and both work quite well for this purpose. 
Yes, they are 48 kHz boxes, and their dynamic range is modest, but it is 
quite sufficient for ham radio. I'm using both of them in my SO2R setup 
for RTTY -- the Tascam feeds one radio to one laptop, the Numark feeds 
the second radio to the other laptop. My testing used JT65-HF as a test 
bed, because it was the most demanding, and because it gave be the best 
on-streen readout of performance. I looked at the number of decodes per 
pass, as well as how well they decoded the weakest signals.

If you need to replace your existing Tascam, I suggest that you do what 
we both did before -- study the online catalogs of semipro audio 
distributors in your country (I buy from B&H Video in NYC and Full 
Compass in Madison, WI) to find a mainstream low cost product that 
supports Win 7.  If I had to replace one of mine, it would likely be 
Tascam's box with the fewest features.

Note that we would use very different criteria to choose a sound card to 
use for spectrum display. I would look for one with a higher sampling 
rate and greater dynamic range.

One thing I looked at was the Pin One Problem, and neither the Numark 
and Tascam boxes have this design error. Last I looked, PreSonus stuff 
does. Behringer has earned a very bad reputation in the pro audio world 
for poor quality, poor service, and for stealing the designs of 
reputable companies.

73, Jim K9YC