Subject:Echo Mia problem

Posted by: Lanco

Date:3/13/2005 2:15:59 AM

Hello

A few years ago I got Sound Forge and a Mia sound card by Echo Audio.

Only problem was I didn't have the right via chips.

At 24/96 the sound graph on SF fills with blue and sounds like shhhhhhhhhh. I could add a couple of letters to that discription and also be correct.

Now my wife has built me a new computer and have the same basic problem.

I can do better at 24/48, but hey, come on, I bought the dern thing so I could do 24/96. I understand the sound between 48 and 96 takes a pretty good ear, but......

Still, even at the 24/48 the program will go into the shhhhhhhh mode, but only occasionally.

I talked to Echo Audio and they suggested increasing the buffer size.

Is there any other things I can do to possibly correct this?

Thanx
Scott

Subject:RE: Echo Mia problem

Reply by: rraud

Date:3/13/2005 5:36:49 PM

Does it record OK in 16bit @ 44.1 or 48k.?

If your feeding the analog input, set word clock on the Echo console to internal, for S/PDIF, set to external. After recording set to internal for playback if you remove or shutdown the S/PDIF source.

Subject:RE: Echo Mia problem

Reply by: Lanco

Date:3/13/2005 8:17:50 PM

Hi rraud

I have that control panel set to Consumer, Sync WAve Devices, and I lock it at 96, 48 or whatever.

The other panel is set to internal. As a matter of fact I can't seem to change it. I may be doing something wrong.

All I'm using this for is recording stereo analog records, tapes and arranger keyboard. I am using mono or I guess what you call unbalanced jacks.

It seemed ok at the 16/44.1. I didn't try it at 16/48 yet. Should I?

I hope to have time to call Marcel at Echo Audio tomorrow.


Thanx for your ideas.

Subject:RE: Echo Mia problem

Reply by: dwhopson

Date:3/17/2005 2:51:25 PM

Hi,

I have a two MiaMidi interfaces (pretty much the same as the original Mia, but with the addition of midi i/o and processing).

I think there are some bugs with these cards and/or the drivers. I have found that with my new computer setup I can't import digital audio through the spdif I/O. It never completely locks onto the external clock. I've tried connecting to an Apogee PMX100 d/a-a/d, 4 different DAT machines, and another computer with spidf and it simply will not work. I've even gone as far as reinstalling the cards in a different machine with full pentium chipsets and processor and still no luck with spdif.

Analog however works without a hitch and sounds great. Can record at all sampling and bit rates without a hic-up. (Sort of blew me away for a card at this price point...but at the same time, I'm not exactly inputing a poor sounding or poorly engineered signal into the inputs.)

My point in all of this is to say that there maybe a some quality control issues with these cards. And your symptoms sound identical to mine with the spdif issue. So, I doubt that it's your software causing the problems. I figured since both of my cards acted the same way, another two would probably do the same thing. Tech support at Echo was baffled as well and seemed to also believe that two more cards would probably act in the same manner. (However, they still haven't provided me with a solution.)

Anyway...once I'm done using the DAT format completely, I really won't have any use for a SPDIF connection on these cards...and will have a better interface with usable spdif if needed. This is a $200 sound card......it has some very strong points...but it also has it's weak points. So, you sort of get what you pay for. jmho

dwh