Professional USB sound card or IP Audio Encoder?

[loco-lee]

Which is better...

USB 2.0 External Sound Card - Professional with LINE IN | eBay


BARIX Instreamer IP Audio Encoder / Police Scanner Feed | eBay


Anyone used either of these items?

I am looking for something that provides a higher quality audio path than those 99 cent sound cards everyone is selling these days.

Any input or feedback helpful - thank you!

 

[KI4VBR]

Encoder/SoundCard

It looks like the Barix is for a stand-alone installation where a PC is not present. This device plugs directly onto the LAN just like an IP surveillance camera would. No computer needed as they normally have an embedded operating system on board (normally linux). I bet a quad of those would sure look nice mounted to the wall with audio being routed to them for capture somewhere else. Keep in mind some of these devices only deliver proprietary protocols to move audio around and you are sometimes forced to use their limited apps. Others use standard encoding which gives you lots of flexibility.

The USB sound card you listed of course requires a PC and I may not use the word professional to describe it. Will it do a good job for a single feed? I am sure. If you are looking at a profession audio interface that will handle multiple channels, with hi-quality fidelity, I would look at a firewire device such as a MOTU interface if you want outboard gear, or something as simple as the EMU 0404 card which plugs onto the PC bus.

The reason I suggest some of these higher priced cards over a simple USB dongle, is there is a lot of processing that takes place on the chip-set of the card or device. It then off-loads your PC of a lot of the normal tasks required when digitizing audio. You can also have multiple channels going concurrently and have a simple, easy to use mixer interface to set your levels and EQ.

I use a MOTU 828Mkii which is overkill for most, but it does double duty as the heart of my home music studio. Check out MOTU.com - Audio Express Overview .....nice, flexible product with all kinds of options.

Good luck and sorry I am so long winded......I can be like that sometimes......

Vince

 

[loco-lee]

I like the idea of the BARIX standalone wall units so I don't need a computer since every computer has too many quirks that cause too many noises and issues with multiple feeds, etc.

Now as for the 828mkii, I have never seen anything like that. I read the specs for the mkii and it says something like 8 TRS inputs, I dont know how to translate that to scanner feeds. How many different mono scanner feeds can this thing handle?

Also, once it is hooked to the computer does it play nice with windows mixer identifying all the different channels. For example, in the RR scannercast software when you are looking at the drop down 'Audio' box to select 'Sound Input' are there an appropriate number of selections and are they each named intuitivley?

Anything else I need to know?

Thanks in advance,

It looks like the Barix is for a stand-alone installation where a PC is not present. This device plugs directly onto the LAN just like an IP surveillance camera would. No computer needed as they normally have an embedded operating system on board (normally linux). I bet a quad of those would sure look nice mounted to the wall with audio being routed to them for capture somewhere else. Keep in mind some of these devices only deliver proprietary protocols to move audio around and you are sometimes forced to use their limited apps. Others use standard encoding which gives you lots of flexibility.

The USB sound card you listed of course requires a PC and I may not use the word professional to describe it. Will it do a good job for a single feed? I am sure. If you are looking at a profession audio interface that will handle multiple channels, with hi-quality fidelity, I would look at a firewire device such as a MOTU interface if you want outboard gear, or something as simple as the EMU 0404 card which plugs onto the PC bus.

The reason I suggest some of these higher priced cards over a simple USB dongle, is there is a lot of processing that takes place on the chip-set of the card or device. It then off-loads your PC of a lot of the normal tasks required when digitizing audio. You can also have multiple channels going concurrently and have a simple, easy to use mixer interface to set your levels and EQ.

I use a MOTU 828Mkii which is overkill for most, but it does double duty as the heart of my home music studio. Check out MOTU.com - Audio Express Overview .....nice, flexible product with all kinds of options.

Good luck and sorry I am so long winded......I can be like that sometimes......

Vince

 

[KI4VBR]

You are right on tartget about using the stand-alone units.....nothing to get a virus or a crashed hard drive.....they just run.

Most all higher-end audio interfaces have windows drivers that allow you to choose which channel you will be using for a particular app. They also come with their own mixer as well as a couple other types of drivers that may be compat with your recording software. So, yes, you would have 8, or 16 actually streams of audio if you used left and right channels.....that might get a lil carried away with an 8 channel unit though.

If you were in the area, I would let you try one of my interfaces with your software to ensure compatibility.......I wish things were always that easy...

A cool company to deal with who has very competitive pricing, but has the worlds best support is a company called sweetwater. Sweetwater.com They can explain your questions much better than I could ever hope and then some. Super nice people who are all educated on the products they sell.....maybe put a call into them.

Good questions......let me know if I can help in any way.
Vince

 

[ScanYak]

I use the Griffin iMic USB Audio Interface. Check it out. https://store.griffintechnology.com/imic

 

[loco-lee]

The specs say the iMic is ...

Technical Specifications
•Audio Input: 1/8" (3.5 mm) stereo line/mic-level


Which is it - line-level or mic-level?

I use the Griffin iMic USB Audio Interface. Check it out. https://store.griffintechnology.com/imic

 

[ScanYak]

Both. That's what's so nice about it. It's switchable.
Hardware Control: Slider switch to select mic or line level

 

[loco-lee]

If I would have read the specs a little closer, I would have seen that! Thanks.

Both. That's what's so nice about it. It's switchable.
Hardware Control: Slider switch to select mic or line level

 

[KI4VBR]

Just a quick note Loco.....Sorry I offered suggestions for some higher end products that probably dont fit your needs. When I saw that you were looking at the Barix encoder, I instantly assumed you were looking at commercial type products. Sorry for the tangent.....

Vince

 

[Bote]

I can't recommend the Barix box. My company had a handful of them to develop into their own proprietary product. I spent a great deal of time tinkering in their setup screens as a result, which you would only have to do once or twice, so I might be biased from that a little bit. They seemed a bit too easy to flake out if you entered the wrong settings, so a hardware reset was required with the attendant reprogramming of all the settings.

But for the price you could get a thin client or a refurbished HP laptop to run your streaming application (ScannerCast or Radio Feed) and have remote access capabilities built-in to Windows for remote control and reprogramming the scanner. I do this on my feeds, some of which are not in my house and it works great.

Plus, you can do anything else with the computer that computers do. The Barix is a one trick pony while a computer is so much more flexible.

As to the USB sound digitizers, I would be willing to bet money that those little $1 USB dongles are just fine for scanner grade audio. I mean, you're not starting with a high fidelity source, it's communications grade audio with its own distortion and other crap. I have heard a lot of feeds that are just not set up properly and they sound terrible as a result. Usually they overdrive the sound card so the audio sounds distorted and there is a lot of noise on the feed. Totally avoidable, but it's not the fault of the sound card, it's just digitizing what's being fed to it.

If you use a recent Uniden scanner take your audio feed out of the green Record audio jack to get line level audio at a consistent level. It's cleaner and you can't mess up the settings by turning the volume knob. That should do fine.