How does a soundcard affect capture preformence?

[Bios]

I was wondering how the soundcard or soundcodec affects capture preforments.
For example when I capture with VDub the sound is limitable factor.
A full frame capture works fine with any codec (or non) but when i capture even half frame with a normal wav codec at 160 Kbps frames are dropped left and right.
The jitter parameter is never stable and if i capture half frame it just accumulates till the point that frames are frequently dropt.
I am beginning to wonder if it has something to do with the on-board soundcard.
I don't think it has someting to do with my harddrive for it is a 7200/100ata and it should be capable.
So i'am wondering what is creating this sound and capture limitation.

Tanx in advance

[Damascus]

The onboard sound probably uses your CPU to do its work. That may cause problems.

[Dr Mordrid]

Expanding on this a bit....

Onboard audio generally does use a softcodec, which does use system resources and can particularly affect analog captures. DV is less affected since its audio is already encoded.

Just plugging an audio card doesn't necessarily fix this though. Some audio cards are frequently a cure worse than the disease. Those include the Creative SBLive & Audigy and cards based on the AudioPCI, Maestro-1 and Maestro-2 chipsets.

The problems range from poor design to poor drivers, especially with the Creative cards. Popping, clicking, buzzing, playback stuttering etc. are typicallly caused by ACPI defects, resource & bus hogging and are the main problems with these cards & chipsets.

Not every system will exhibit these issues, but enough do to make them a risky investment for an editing system.

Cards based on the new Cirrus Logic/Crystal CS4630 DSP, on the other hand, use VERY few system resources and are excellent choices for an editing system. These include the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz (Videologic Sonic Fury outside the US), Hercules GameTheater XP and a few others.

Dr. Mordrid

[dchip]

Dr Mordrid, I took your wise recommendation and put a TBSC in my new system and I am very happy with it. Powerful, great sound, but other than that, I hardly know it's there. I'm using Win2k PRO SP2 also and the TBSC is right at home. Gone are the days of iffy drivers, clunky and intrusive software and system slowdowns. As you know the TBSC has one control panel that is opened with the speaker icon in the sys tray that is tabbed with about every audio control one could ever need. Beautifully designed product and software suite. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction on sound cards for NLE.

[Sciascia]

Sweet ain't it? I tried the Audigy and paractically had to reformat to disinfect my system. Probably would have been faster anyway to foramt, jeez. the Santa Cruz has the nicest little control panel and that is it...Great stuff and I love that versajack!

[Dr Mordrid]

Yeah, that thing kinda grows on you doesn't it? It's great for editing.

Good as it is the TBSC isn't the studio card my audio workstations Echo Gina24 is, but that thing is a 24 bit/96khz monster with all manner of I/O options.

These options include multi-client, 2 balanced in/8 balanced out & both ADAT and S/PDIF I/O. S/PDIF can be used with either coaxial or optical connects. It also supports GSIF.

Multi-client means the user can define setups to play one set of outputs using one program and to another set of outputs using another program simultaneously. This opens all manner of creative options.

The GINA24 comes with the Stienberg Cubasis VST audio editing suite (previously it came with Cool Edit Pro).

Dr. Mordrid

[Patenter]

I've used on-board sound and PCI Santa Cruz. I haven't had a problem with either one, but obviously prefer using the Santa Cruz.