Projects

I have decided to start a new project, this is to rackmount the external breakoutbox for my not-so-great Creative Audigy 2 Platinum Ex soundcard.

I’ll use a 2U project box, shove the breakout box inside it and put a load of differential amplifiers and balanced line drivers into it so that all the I/O can be balanced, as well as bringing out the firewire, digital audio and MIDI connections.

�The main problem is going to be the link cable between the PC and breakout box, it uses a special creative-we’re-only-going-to-use-our-own-design-so-you-cant-change-it cable as well as the outputs being on the card in the PC

So a loom/multicore of some time will be needed to bring the 7 line unbalanced outputs from the soundcard up to the breakout box (i’m thinking a D-SUB on the box with minijacks or phonos on the card end) the creative cable will have to be left as-is and getting the socket out onto the back of the card may be tricky (perhaps i can get another broken one and mod it? or cut the cable, but i don’t really want to do that). It will require investigating, but in the end i will get 6 balanced line level inputs, 7 balanced line level outputs, coax and optical SP/DIF, MIDI I/O, 2x firewire and a headphone out (not that i’d use the headphone out but anyway…) I could somehow bring up the MIDI I/O from the card also.

I may fit the crappy ADC i have so that i can have a total of 8 balanced line level inputs – that would fit in nicely with the Yamaha MG16/4 mixer for recording (it has 8 mic pres)

�Thats the idea, need to get some other projects finished first though methinks.