[FrothyDog]

I was very close to buying the M-Audio Revo 7.1 when I stumbled across the Digital Audio Labs Card Deluxe . It seems like a more professional solution and posts some tighter specs than the Revo.


Eric

 

[VikingBoy]

I used one for a few years and was more than happy with it.

I recently upgraded to the RME 9632 and havent looked back since.


The RME is a very good card, but I think it could do with being updated. Its getting long in the tooth now.


The analogue outputs on both the DAL and the RME outperform the REVO by a fair amount.

 

[Les Auber]

I've had a CardDeluxe for a couple years now. Excellent sounding card. The only kicker is that while the card worked great with no fuss whatsoever on a Win98SE system it's pretty much dead when I did a complete overhaul and went up to Win XP Pro. The system indicates everything is working fine until you try to uninstall the driver or disable the device. Then device manager locks up. It also interfere's with some software installs.


DAL's support has been rather useless, "Sounds like a corrupted driver, just reload it." Duh! When I responded with details and indicated that this did not work I got only "Wait for the new driver". They do have a new WDM driver coming but it was supposed to be out about a month ago. I'm tempted to try and sign up for their beta test program just to see if I can get the blasted thing running.


I also have a Revo in a different machine but they aren't located such that I can compare. It is decent sounding but I can't say that it would match the DAL card. M-Audio's drivers are less then stellar also.


I don't know what all you want to do but remember the CardDeluxe isn't a multi-channel out card. It gives 2 ch analog in and out and SPDIF digital in and out. At least the drivers in the old set-up did a fine AC-3 pass through. If you're looking for multi-channel analog for games and AC-3 out for DVD playback the DAL may not be the best choice. If you want stereo playback or recording you'll probably like it or at least if they ever get the driver working.

 

[Hoots]

I a/b'ed the REVO and CardDeluxe w/analog connection in 2-channel at high volume with Klipschorns and found the CardDeluxe smoother. My REVO sounds more like my consumer grade Toshiba DVD player in 2-channel.


For DVD DTS 5.1 playback couldn't I run SPDIF to a receiver? I assume I just can't run analog multi-channel w/the DAL...I don't own the DAL and just did a test with my friend.

 

[Les Auber]

Hoots, when things are working right I believe that the DAL would pass a DTs 5.1 signal out via SPDIF. It used to do a fine job for me with AC-3 and hopefully will again when the driver issues are sorted out.


You can get multi channel analog by running multiple CardDeluxe's. I wouldn't have a clue on how to set it up, however. Some of the pro recording software supports this at least in theory for multi-track recordings. I have no direct experience with this aspect of it.

 

[FrothyDog]

I'm really confused by this picture which quotes the SPDIF being "stereo" digital IN/OUT. What's a stereo SPDIF? I assume this does not mean it's only capable of passing 2-channel audio digitally?


If I did want the ability for multi-channel games could I feed the SPDIF output from a Soundstorm based motherboard to the SPDIF input on the DAL card? How would I override the motherboard audio and use the DAL card for real DD/DTS sources?

 

[FrothyDog]

Nobody wants to tackle these questions huh?

 

[greenkiwi]

I would assume that it is talking about being a sound device. There are very few devices that will actually create DD... the Soundstorm is the only one I've heard of. As for passthrough capabilities, all the card is doing is routing the data from the player to the receiver. That shouldn't be a problem. I don't know how well it would do taking spdif in from the soundstorm and then passing it back out again.