50 cal said:
man, i'm getting confused, i here some people say it works flawlessy and then some say it sucks ass.
1.)Well the thing is that you should not consider the pc as a thing that does everything you want to do on it, it's audio pur sang totaly meaning there is no room for anything else because you want the maximum resources to be available for high performance ( which is what audio requires ). The pc is officialy been pimped and is now a DAW.
2.)Intel Pentium only!!! cpu, motherboard, matching fast memory and ( when doing multitrack recording ) get them S-ATA drives ( 2x ) with enough cache. It's expensive but you're handicapped without them when recording multiple I/O's at the same time. Then make sure all is updated, starting with the BIOS first.
3.)This is a great card, but a mistery in the hands of a noob. There are quite a lot of basic techniques/options implemented but if you're not into hardware consoles ( the inline cq. splitsection type console, which is a multitrack principle on its own based on non destructive recording and features Inline Monitoring ) is hard to comprehand the usefullness of all features, or even the fact wether you need those functions in your setup. Add to this the routing possibilities and you're miles away from kansas. This is a great deal you need to understand in order to get ready and make pro sounding productions and it's only difficult because there too many options ( but consider that to be a big advantage ).
Inline in a nutshell said:
With "normal" mixing consoles you have 1 fader per channel for volume control. A mixing console according the inline priciple has 2 faders per channel for volume control. One fader is for volume of the recording, while the other fader is for volume control of the mix. Due to this principle you can make a recording and mix that is independent from each other. It's possible to record without the use of EQ and outboard gear, while using them within the mix, which is simultaneously generated.
The major advantage with this method is that during recording a coarse stereo mix is made, which is independent of the multitrack recording. The coarse stereo mix can be takin' home on the same day of the recording. The director, musican(s) can at ease listen at home to the recordings and select the songs that will or will be not used during mixdown. By means of this method you can save a lot of hours in the studio, because you already have sort out which song wil be used or not
Inline monitoring in a nutshell said:
In-Line Monitoring
A mixing board architecture. Many newer large format mixing consoles have an additional, (often smaller) fader section designed into each channel strip. This can directly feed either the recorded signal being fed to the multitrack recorder or the monitor mix. In the standard monitor mix mode, this small fader is used to adjust the monitor level of the associated tape track. In the "Flipped" mode ( no, not busta ), it is used to control the signal being sent to tape while the main fader can be used to control monitor mix levels. This enables multitrack levels (which aren't often changed while recording) to be located out of the way, while the more frequently used monitor levels are located at the more accessible main fader position. Mixing consoles that do not use an inline configuration usually employ what is known as a "split" format, where the tape sends and returns are on completely separate channel strips from the main channel inputs. Both designs have their strengths and weaknesses. Most modern consoles use the in-line approach.
They often also refer to it as the "Mix B" function or "Flip-switch", every brand their own jargon. Sending to tape is simply sending to whatever's recording, which has lots of inputs.
Noobs, Also check ( its a good read, a lot too )
http://www.tweakheadz.com/
http://www.tweakheadz.com/review_of_the_emu_1820m.html
Why its so damn good in specs;
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/creative-emu-1820/
4.) I ain't gonna bitch about this but... Powerfx has it's limits due to driver development, they're engaging to 64bit drivers etcetera....etcetera...etcetera...blablabla....blah di blabla.
You know, they slam a dsp from the audigy series into a pro card as an extra and to keep shit affordable while slamming the competition. You pay 99 bucks in the least and you get a lot more than any card under 150 bucks, hell not even 200 unless it's another emu. Take out the DSP feature and it would still kill the competition because of it's features, so if it works completly flawless in the near time than that's real cute but I'll chose PSP plugs over the EDSP fx because ( PSP is much better thusfar ) dual-processors are on their way as we speak to make up the loss we suffer now from cpu digesting reverbs.
There's problems with WDM support at 96kHz and 192kHz, in fact there's seems to be no support at all, so you're left with ASIO... not a big issue.
Ey..simply forget it..stop whining hehe.
Last I like to add that; Yes it's all fucked up if you dont meet the minimal requirements and buy the friggin M version (1212M/1820M) simply because you have much better converters. You got M and start using proper vst's and you'll even forget that the card has a DSP chip on it.
