Hi everybody,

Yesterday I ventured forth into my local computer shop and picked up a "lined" USB soundcard for a whole £10, the sort you can get on eBay for a quid probably.

A quick report for those that want better sound on their Amiga follows!

First off, my system:
Amiga 4000 (towered), CS-PPC 060@50/604e@200, 128MB 60nS RAM, Prometheus (Voodoo III 3000, RTL8029 ethernet), AmigaOS 3.9 and 4.0

I've tried running this under OS 4 and OS 3.9 and OS 4 didn't work. The AHI never picked up the USBAudio device at all, so this mini-review is more for OS 3.9.

The installation was - as you'd expect from the Poseidon stack - no more than just a matter of plugging in the device. The Trident window (Poseidon's GUI) then updated thus:



Excellent. No problems there! A quick look in the AHI prefs now to see what happens....



Lovely. There it is! Testing the sound gave the appropriate beep straight away! Upping the frequency to 48KHz smoothened off the sound noticeably, though, so I've set it to 16bit 48KHz.

Next stop AmigaAMP... install the correct WarpOS decoder, load an MP3.... Perfect. Sgt. Pepper coming out the speakers like a champ.

I've not looked at recording anything as I've never really looked at recording sound on the Amiga - no audio input before! Playback however seems fine so far. While writing this I've been playing music and it was perfect.


Now if only it worked under OS 4... a quick look with snoopy showed that AHI was trying and failing to load USBAudio.library.main.a or something so it sounds like an incompatibility with the new library structure.

Now off to find more programs that work with AHI! Hope that mini-report helps people (and helps E3B sell more Denebs!).

Just as a footnote, the usbaudio doesn't work on the Highway card, only the newer DENEB.

@Spirantho

Thanks for the review. I'm currently unsure whether to go USB audio, or stick with the Audio card in my prometheus.
May have to do some benchmarking

Regards



Rich

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@Spirantho
Quote:

Now if only it worked under OS 4... a quick look with snoopy showed that AHI was trying and failing to load USBAudio.library.main.a or something so it sounds like an incompatibility with the new library structure.

The nativ OS4 AHI expects of course nativ drivers. If the drivers are not native you need a little stub-file that adds the Interface stuff. Thats why there are all the #?.a.main files in LIBS: .

Since the interface should be the same for all AHI drivers it is worth a try to rename one of the #?.a.main to USBAudio.a.main .

@Spirantho

That is great!!! E3B thx on great HW for classic Amiga!!!!!and Chris on awesome USB stack!!!

Last edited by VooDoo on 25-May-2008 at 12:04 PM.

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@Spirantho

Interesting! Is this just for the Denebs then or could I use the USB sound cards on say... A Subway USB?

I'm planning on getting one soon for my A1200, would be nice to use USB Drives, Cameras etc with my Amiga, even though I have a PCMCIA SD card reader for file transfers.

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A1200, 68060/64MB/1.2GB/WiFi/AGAtoCRT/OS3.9 Pegasos I, G3 600Mhz/512/9200SE/80GB WinUAE, Ryzen 5 2400G/Vega11, 8GB DDR4, 256GB SSD,Win 10 Pro x64 Amiga Forever !

@DBAlex

Quote:

I'm planning on getting one soon for my A1200, would be nice to use USB Drives, Cameras etc with my Amiga, even though I have a PCMCIA SD card reader for file transfers.

Really, that works? A PCMCIA SD card reader? Never knew. All I need next is a working PCMCIA CDROM drive.

@ZeroG

Good call, that man!

I'm now writing this under AmigaOS 4 and using TuneNet to play MP3s and radio in the background...

I've noticed a tiny bit of clicking in the audio but I don't know whether that's the sound card, or Tunenet or whatever.

I couldn't just rename the file, though - I had to edit it to find the correct library interfaces. I've uploaded it here.
I can't see that's copyright or anything but if it is I'll remove it. In the meantime just copy the contents of that archive to LIBS: and AHI picks up the soundcard! I wish it were properly OS4 native though....

I doubt the Subway will work, by the way, as the Highway doesn't work... AFAIK they're pretty similar.

(Edits: typos in the filename!)

Last edited by Spirantho on 25-May-2008 at 03:57 PM.
Last edited by Spirantho on 25-May-2008 at 03:56 PM.
Last edited by Spirantho on 25-May-2008 at 03:55 PM.

@Hypex

Yup! I was surprised too, All you have to do is make sure its a Type II card, and have cfd.device installed from Aminet...

I just bought a generic £5 5-In-1 PCMCIA card reader from Ebay (EOUP branded IIRC) and then bought a 2GB SD card for £5! So I can now transfer rather a lot of files in one go

One thing I want to get is a mediator & tower... Although i'm unsure as to whether thats a good idea or not, it would end up costing £210 (£70 for EZ Z4 Tower + £140 for Mediator 1200LT4... The cheapest option for both) and I would only be left with an 030 machine with maximum 32mb... It would be better than AGA I suppose. I will probably end up waiting it out for a Natami though, even though i'm not even sure that will be released...

I wish 040's, 060's, PPC's and Towers weren't so expensive... It's driving people to want a real Amiga for testing to emulation more and more...

Sorry to hi-jack the thread!

Alex.

_________________
A1200, 68060/64MB/1.2GB/WiFi/AGAtoCRT/OS3.9 Pegasos I, G3 600Mhz/512/9200SE/80GB WinUAE, Ryzen 5 2400G/Vega11, 8GB DDR4, 256GB SSD,Win 10 Pro x64 Amiga Forever !

Quote:

DBAlex wrote: Interesting! Is this just for the Denebs then or could I use the USB sound cards on say... A Subway USB?

Maybe it is only possible because of the DMA and USB 2.0 capabilities of the Deneb...

Would like to know that myself though, maybe my Algor could drive one of those beauties too

Last edited by mrzammler on 25-May-2008 at 05:08 PM.

@Spirantho
Quote:

I'm now writing this under AmigaOS 4 and using TuneNet to play MP3s and radio in the background...

Quote:

I couldn't just rename the file, though - I had to edit it to find the correct library interfaces. I've uploaded it here. I can't see that's copyright or anything but if it is I'll remove it.

I bet there is a copyright from Hyperion/AmigaInc on the original file.

You could create a complete new and copyright free stub with the AHI driver devkit and this How to.

If the new stub does work, you could send it to E3B without a problem. I think they will be very happy to add it to the Poseidon package.

Or i could have a go on it, if you would test it.

Quote:

In the meantime just copy the contents of that archive to LIBS: and AHI picks up the soundcard!

Thanks, but i dont need it. I have a Defina "Flipper Edition" in my A4k.

@DBAlex

Quote:

Yup! I was surprised too, All you have to do is make sure its a Type II card, and have cfd.device installed from Aminet... I just bought a generic £5 5-In-1 PCMCIA card reader from Ebay (EOUP branded IIRC) and then bought a 2GB SD card for £5! So I can now transfer rather a lot of files in one go

Excellent! Thanks for the hints.

Are there also IDE->SD adaptors? That would just be tops for me. Or a PCMCIA->CDROM would really be. I have an A1200 I use for a club machine. ATM I have a PC desktop case hanging off an IDE cable with my HD and CDROM inside. Be good to scrap it and have an SSD type drive for the HD and some external CDROM I can just connect to it.

Anyone got a Zappo? Or other solution? Cheap A400D?

Quote:

One thing I want to get is a mediator & tower... Although i'm unsure as to whether thats a good idea or not, it would end up costing £210 (£70 for EZ Z4 Tower + £140 for Mediator 1200LT4... The cheapest option for both) and I would only be left with an 030 machine with maximum 32mb... It would be better than AGA I suppose. I will probably end up waiting it out for a Natami though, even though i'm not even sure that will be released... I wish 040's, 060's, PPC's and Towers weren't so expensive... It's driving people to want a real Amiga for testing to emulation more and more...

Yes, then you need a gfx card, sfx card for 16-bit sound. It's true, this stuff would be worth nothing in the PC world at that speed. Even an A1 module at 800MHz would mean nothing if it was an x86. I haven't looked hard, but I am thinking an unexpanded A4000D would suit me nicely. I've never had an A4000. But would there even be a base model?

@Hypex

Quote:

Yes, then you need a gfx card, sfx card for 16-bit sound.

Yeah, but at least a sound card only costs a fiver if you have a Deneb. :)