Will 2 of the same soundcard play nice at the same time?

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Cyrilix

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I currently have an M-Audio Revolution 5.1 outputting digital via RCA coaxial. I would like to output digital to another component at the same time. Would another one of these cards (also with the digital output selected) play nicely with the current one?

I'm not sure if anyone has tried this before... in fact, I'm unsure how I'd even go about doing that, given that the control panel might not have selection between soundcard #1 and soundcard #2.
 
You can usually run more then one soundcard at the same time. It is very common for guys that use a PC for home recording. The software depends on the card.
 
I'm assuming that they will both output sound at the same time, however, how would one go about controlling them? Or would a control simply affect both at the same time - ie. if you change the mode to digital, they both become digital, if you change the mode to analog, they both become analog. I'm considering getting another Revolution 5.1 which would only be some $80 CAD.
 
It depends on quite a few things. You can set them for both input and ouput if your using a recording app. I don't htink it's possible to set two cards to do the same task in windows though. If you understand what I mean.
 
Well, I'd like to set them both to do output, and the same thing at that, but I think you're implying that's impossible.

Has anyone else tried this with 2 of the same card?
 
Usually in a application you can only set for one sound device. That is the trouble. Inside of a recording application those rules do not apply you can record from multiple cards or playback to multiple cards. For instance the idea of playing a game and having it output to two different card though..is not really somehint that can be done easily. There may ne some app out there that might be able to help..I am not sure though. What EXACTLY are you trying to do?
 
Well, more or less, I'm trying to set up a speaker system and a headphone system that don't collide with each other. You can basically think of it as trying to set up two sound systems that play the same sound (like how in stores, all of the TVs play one video), but that have different sources powering them.

Soundcard 1 --> DAC 1 --> amp 1 --> output 1
Soundcard 2 --> DAC 2 --> amp 2 --> output 2

...and I want them to work at the same time and be playing the same things. In my first system, the DAC 1 and amp 1 are combined in the Panasonic XR55 receiver feeding a speaker set which is my output 1. In my second system, the dedicated DAC and the headphone amp are my DAC 2 and amp 2, and the output 2 would be a pair of headphones.

Audioguy, in response to you, I thought that Windows would output to whatever sound systems were enabled in device manager, but that may not be the case.

Edit: I gave M-Audio support a call and they told me that the Revolution series does not support multiple cards, only the Delta series (which includes the Audiophile 2496 and Audiophile 192). This does not mean that the Revolution series won't work in parallel -- it just means that they don't know and I'd be a guinea pig.

Edit2: I forgot to add that all of this boils down to the fact that people tell me the XR55 is best used when taking a digital input so it can use its inbuilt digital comparator for amping -- which is why I'm trying to figure all of this out. This is just hearsay, but I heard that it wasn't nearly as impressive when used with analog inputs.
 
If I am understanding you correctly. Sure you can do that as long as your not trying to use both at the same time-with the same application. You can use two soundcard with different apps. Say your listening to music with your speakers and then you want to use the headphones and the second soundcard then yes you can do that. They will not beable to play the audio from the same application at the same time. not without some type of thrid party app. As far as I know. I use two soundcards, not like this though.
 
Audioguy said:
If I am understanding you correctly. Sure you can do that as long as your not trying to use both at the same time-with the same application. You can use two soundcard with different apps. Say your listening to music with your speakers and then you want to use the headphones and the second soundcard then yes you can do that.
Click to expand...

Well, I'm trying to remove the hassle of switching all the time. If they could both output at the same time, I would never have to switch and the other soundcard would just be outputting to nothing... but you mean that I would have to go into device manager to switch each time, right? (disable one device, enable the other)
 
Yes, but usually you can do that with a audio or video application. Just tell it which card you want the output to go to..For games you wold have to set it within Windows control panel.
 
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