PCI Sound Cards

[richidoo]

http://www.avguide.com/review/the-absolute-sound-card-survey-tas-213

I found this very interesting. It compares the features and SQ of 7 cards. The winner is one of the least expensive tested.

[djdube525]

Ahh... I used to have the ESI Juli@... I thnk I sold that when I was looking for some quick cash... I kinda regret that decision...    it was/is a very good bang for the buck pci card.

[Carlman]

Weird... I cannot imagine the Juli@ sounding better than a Lynx.  That's just nutty.  I guess everyone's system is going to do things differently.. not sure how everything was configured exactly.. but sounds like the Juli@ card really worked for him in his system.  Good 'bang for the buck' would be what I'd expect but not better than a card 3+ times the cost, that is the gold standard for many 2-channel audiophiles. 
However, I've heard the RME sound dreadful.. .so, who knows? 
Anyone here using the Juli@ that's compared it to others?

-C

[manaox2]

I was tempted to get the Julia just to tap into its i2s feed for a low jitter computer slaved asynchronous input for a DAC if possible.

[mgalusha]

I've had a Juli@ for several years and never tried it in my audio system. I purchased it to use in my shop for measuring since it was 24/192 capable and could theoretically manage ~94kHz. I did use it as part of my SACD recording rig but when I bought a dedicated PC for that it didn't have a PCI slot and I picked up a TC Sounds Impact Twin that uses an IEE1394 interface. Imagine my horror when I made a comparison of the captures of the Juli@ vs the TC and the much less expensive Juli@ sounded better. Turns out using the optical input on the TC is a much better choice and that made it very difficult to tell them apart. Mebbe I should take my shop computer into the listening room to see how the Juli@ sounds, the PC is noisy as hell but if it rocks a quiet version could always be built.

The Juli@ is what Bryston is using in the BDP-1 as is Auraliti.

[richidoo]

The Juli@ is what Bryston is using in the BDP-1 as is Auraliti.

Hmmmmmmm.... very interesting! Please report if you try it in your system.

Did you really record DSD to your computer? Never heard of that short of Sonoma software or a VAIO laptop.

[Carlman]

Sigh... so a new audio PC is in my future... Too much pc-building and sound card stirring about it around here to ignore now..

[mgalusha]

I took the PCM stream from the oppo bd -83 and captured that as 24/88.2. There is a long thread on AC about using an HDMI de-embedder to get the pcm out and converted to spdif.

Sent from my NookColor using Tapatalk

[richidoo]

Thanks, I'll look for it