[cma-l] Radio playout software companies

[Two Lochs Radio]

There are USB interfaces that are cheap and work really well with anything
that just wants to see a standard windows audio device. Behringer do one for
about £25 which has two stero unbalanced in/out, and there's another one for
a few pounds more that has balanced ins and outs on flying leads with a
choice of XLR or balanced 1/4" jack
Probably not quite up there with the top flight in quality, but very good
for everyday use in my experience. There must be a limit to how many hifi
sound streams can reasonably be fed off one machine, but I've had 3 of these
running simultaneously ok for a multitrack recording.

But we wanted to use  4-port and 10-port M-Audio PCI cards so we took the
other tack of making sure we used motherboards with PCI - Myriad doesn't
need a particularly high performing computer - a good model of PC from 5
years ago is perfectly well up to the job.

Another option since ATX and micro-ATX motherboards are generally
standardized is to spend another £60-80 on a good quality motherboard with
PCI, such as the Gigabyte H55M (micro ATX), Intel DH55C (ATX), Asus P7P55D
(ATX) or several others, all of which will support the latest i3/i5/i7
processors and DDR3 memory, but also have 2 or 3 PCI slots as well as
PCIEX16.

If you want to use an AMD processor, one of the highest spec/best value
boards is the Gigabyte SKT-AM3-870A has 6GB SATA, USB3, DDR3 memory and
still has 3 PCI slots.

NB are you sure your PCs have no PCI at all? Quite a few have it on the
motherboard as an alternative in one position, but not necessarily aligned
with a blanking plate on the chassis. Or the suppliers may simply not be
mentioning it. I just had a look through PCPro's 'A-listed' computers
(usually my first port of call when selecting hardware!) and they all have
PCI slots as well as the PCIe, although several use cases that don't make
them easily acessible.

Alex

----- Original Message ----- >
> On 23/06/2011 12:39, CMA-L wrote:
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: "Shane Carey"<shane at eclectic-productions.co.uk>
>>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> We recently spent a fortune on a bunch of Myriad licenses, and are
>> busy trying to implement them to the station now. Unfortunately, the
>> software’s NOT compatible with any soundcards that work with new
>> computers – ones with PCIE connections. All new computers we’ve found
>> don’t have PCI slots, so we’re having to downgrade our computers to be
>> able to handle the soundcards.
>>
>> P2 recommend an Edirol soundcard – but it was discontinued by Edirol a
>> year ago! Through talking to their helpline, it seems they’ve not
>> really considered this, and the response was really vague. They don’t
>> appear to be discussing with hardware manufacturers.
>>
>> We may be stuck having paid so much, but just in case, does anyone
>> know a really good playout system which doesn’t cost the earth and
>> works with contemporary hardware?
>>
>> Thanks, Shane
>
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