Reverb on a PC Soundcard ?

Does anybody know of a PC (internal) card that will produce a very basic reverb ? I don't mean the Lexicon external units nor the software programes.

I do believe that you can get a sound card with a reverb unit,
but I would like to use my existing M-Audio 2496 with another inexpensive reverb unit. Any ideas ?

Thanks,
John Dean

Of course the Soundblaster cards offer many reverb programs, even multi-channel and some other interesting digital processing. About four years ago I downloaded a file to allow the EMU APS (Audio Production Studio) software to run on the back of the soundblaster card (in other words, you do not see the Creative interface, but a much more 'business-like', professional type of GUI with faders, mute buttons, metering etc, with proprietry reverberation algorithms, which were more than acceptable and far superior to the soundblaster ones. A quick search has failed to bring up the relevant pages, assuming they still exist. I do have the EXE file though and the manual, so if you are interested I could send you a copy (it was free at the time which seemed strange for such a full-featured and powerful application). It could also manipulate soundfont files, if that is of any interest.

Hi chaps - a quick Google turned up the APS drivers here: http://come.to/sblive

May give these a try myself I think...

Hi John,

you may also want to look at kxproject.lugosoft.com. Its a free driver for all EMU-10k1 and 10k2 based sound cards, this is the entire SBlive, Audigy, Emu-APs family. The driver is an ongoing development and very versatile. You can even get multiple SBLives to run in one computer, which was never supported by Creative drivers. Plus you get very good control over DSP-effects, with custom reverb implementatins and the like.

Greetings
Reiner

I'm using a SoundBlaster Audigy 2 and for playing dry samples I set the inbuilt "Environmental Effects" on with the "Chapel" reverb pattern. It seems perfectly acceptable to me for my practice needs.

It doesn't seem to have any detrimental effect on the ability of the main CPU to processor the Hauptwerk samples, so I assume that the reverb processing is happening entirely on the Audigy 2 card.

Martin

I do have the EXE file though and the manual, so if you are interested I could send you a copy (it was free at the time which seemed strange for such a full-featured and powerful application). It could also manipulate soundfont files, if that is of any interest.

Thanks, but will this only cater for SoundBlaster ? I have the M-Audio - will it work ?

John Dean

Reiner,

you may also want to look at kxproject.lugosoft.com. Its a free driver for all EMU-10k1 and 10k2 based sound cards, this is the entire SBlive, Audigy, Emu-APs family. The driver is an ongoing development and very versatile. You can even get multiple SBLives to run in one computer, which was never supported by Creative drivers. Plus you get very good control over DSP-effects, with custom reverb implementatins and the like.

But can this be used on other Sound Cards like the M-Audio ? What is the
SBLive ? Is this hardware related or is it a separate software program ?
I don't really understand much about it.

John Dean

Hello John,
the SBLive is Creatives Soundblaster-Live card. I don't know the M_audio card, but I assume it is not supported by the kxproject.

Greetings
Reiner

Thanks for introducing me to the kxproject drivers Reiner - I've now installed them for my Augidy and they work a treat. Don't know how, but with effectively the same mixer settings, I now get much less noise output from my card. I had assumed in the past that my cheap desktop speakers combined with even cheaper cable were resulting in the hiss, but it turned out to be something the creative drivers were doing.

The KX drivers were simple to install, and I did so (probably foolhardily) on top of my creative drivers with no problems.

Thanks,
Chris.

Hi Chris,
Do you have the Audigy, or Audigy II, or . . . ?

G'Day - I just have a bottom of the range Audigy card (I believe mk1, but I'm at work now so can't check). I am tempted to upgrade to an M-Audio card (or firewire box) sometime in the future when I set up my Hauptwerk organ properly in our garage, but I think I'll experiment with the KX drivers first, as they do seem to offer much more flexibility in the use of the Audigy.

I had a soundblaster live card. The problem was a very bad latency, it had on the other hand the possibility of reverb.
I bought the M audio 2496 card (much better than soundblaster en very good latency performance if you use the right drivers).
Because i couldn't find an acceptable real time software solution for the reverb I installed both cards in my PC.
I send the output from Hauptwork to the M-audio card.
Connect the line out of the M-audio with the line in of the Soundblaster en send the soundblaster output to your amplifier.
This way you can use the reverb possibilities of the soundblaster without the problem of its poor latency.
It's a very cheap way to get reverb in your sound.
Good luck

Bas van der Peet

Bas,

I had a soundblaster live card. The problem was a very bad latency, it had on the other hand the possibility of reverb.
I bought the M audio 2496 card (much better than soundblaster en very good latency performance if you use the right drivers).

This is exactly what I want to do !! Could you tell me the the eact model of the soundblaster card, and do you use the Digital Audio output from the M-Audio to feed into the soundblaster ?

Also, as I have the M-Audio 2496 I would be interested in the drivers that you are using.

Thanks,
John Dean, UK

Dear John
I have a soundblaster live 5.1 card (much cheaper then the audigy). See on the site of creative for details.
It has a EMU10K1™ Digital Signal Processor.
I connected the analog line out of the M audio card to to the analog line in of the Soundblaster card.
I don't want to use the AD convertor of the cheap Soundblaster card.
The drivers (as advised somewhere in this forum is the 5.10.0.27 which can be downloade from
http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=support.drivers
The whole thing runs under windows xp home on a pentium 4 2.4 Ghz with 1.5 G memory.
Good Luck
Bas van der Peet

Bas

I have a soundblaster live 5.1 card (much cheaper then the audigy). See on the site of creative for details.
It has a EMU10K1™ Digital Signal Processor.

Many thanks for the information. I think that I will opt for this solution as the alternative is quite expensive -something like the Lexicon MPX.
The drawback here is that you get dozens of effects but you only really need 1 or 2.

Best regards,
John Dean, UK