Re: [Jack-Devel] Hardware jack + linux

On 26 Jul 2013, at 18:13, Jan Kohnert <[hidden]> wrote:

> Hello folks,
> 
> first of all my appologies, since this is a bit OT, but I need some 
> information about hardware which works fluently in a linux/jack/ardour 
> environment and I hope to find some experts here.
> 
> So here's my issue:
> I'm doing some recording/mixing for a bunch of local musicians; at the moment 
> I'm using a Mackie Onyx Blackjack as interface. This is just fine, since the 
> recordings are mostly guitar and vocals and I can add additional tracks by 
> overdubbing.
> 
> But now I'm facing the task to record a band with drums and the Blackjack is 
> not suitable to fit my needs for this task anymore.
> 
> I was thinking about an interface with PCIe bus and at least 8 (better would 
> be 16) channels input and at least 4 channels back for monitoring. I know of 
> digital mixers having the ability to directly connect the input channels to a 
> PC, but I don't know how well they work in my environment. Another thing I 
> know of are some RME soundcards (I only found cards with 8 channels) which 
> should work well with alsa, but I don't know how well they work with 
> jackd/ardour. 
> 
> Is anybody here having some experience in linux audio recording who can give 
> me some hints what exactly to look for?
> 
> Ah, forgot to mention: a samplerate of 96kbit would be preferred, but at the 
> moment I could live with 48kbit, too.
> 
> Thanks a lot and greetings from Germany.

Hi Jan,

RME sound cards generally perform really really well under Linux. I've had a couple (an old Hammerfall 9636, a HDSP9632 and a HDSP9652) and they've been great. None of their PCI/PCIe offerings, however, feature microphone preamps, and their higher-channel-count cards tend to be all-digital. As such, to record a drum kit + extras, I suggest that you will need an external multichannel mic preamp and A/D box. Many products exist which do both jobs, some with ADAT I/O and others with AES/EBU I/O.

ADAT tends to be cheaper than AES, and each ADAT channel transports 8 audio channels instead of 2. But it is limited to 48kHz operation (some kit will do something called S/MUX, whereby a 96kHz audio channel can be transported in place of two 48kHz ones, so that an ADAT channel will transport 4 audio channels at the high rate). At the cheapest end, a Behringer ADA8000 will give you 8 microphone preamps and A/D conversion (to ADAT), and 8 D/A converters (from ADAT) with balanced analogue outputs. But, of course, limited to 48lHz. Higher-end ADAT units exist all over the place (and RME do make some as well), so have a read around.

If you go with an ADAT converter, you'll almost certainly be well-served by either the RME HDSPe AIO (1x ADAT I/O + 1 AES/EBU I/O + some analogue extras) or the HDSPe RayDAT (4x ADAT I/O only). Only the latter will be capable of getting 16, or even 8, channels at 24/96 over the ADAT.

If you go with an AES/EBU converter, the natural choice of card would be the RME HDSPe AES, which features 8 AES/EBU digital inputs and outputs (so, 16 channels each way, all at up to 24/192).


I'm sure many manufacturers' sound cards will work well for your application, but under Linux, the RMEs have a great reputation.

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