External Sound Card question

[Norseman]

I'm wondering if anyone knows of a high quality External Sound Card that has an easy access adjustment knob for adjusting the sound front to rear for when you're switching from a rear engine car to a front engine car... I'd just like to make it to where you can really hear the difference and adjust it to your liking. Or if there's a 5.1 sound system that allows you to do this?

 

[MaddogBC]

Here's a good review of the nicest one I've seen. No direct experience but this guy knows his stuff, tough to go wrong with Sennheiser.

 

[Mr Latte]

I'm wondering if anyone knows of a high quality External Sound Card that has an easy access adjustment knob for adjusting the sound front to rear for when you're switching from a rear engine car to a front engine car... I'd just like to make it to where you can really hear the difference and adjust it to your liking. Or if there's a 5.1 sound system that allows you to do this?

Engine sounds are not output as individual effects that we can control but contained within the audio mix. In most racing games 5.1 / 7.1 is rather overrated. Often the center channel is a mono mix of the LR and the .1 channel is underused. Stereo or indeed Quad Surround (front/rear stereo pairs) can be excellent, especially in such a confined area as a sim rig.

If applying a front/rear based fader control, (via software or hardware) this would enable higher/lower volume to the front or rear speakers but it will do this for all sounds, contained within the mix and output to those channels. not just the engine sounds.

Here is an example of a compact potentiometer-based fader control I can recommend that requires no power adapter to adjust the gain how you want on 4 channels.



Creative Solution?
To give you some perspective on the experimentation work I've been developing.
Custom profiles applying my own (IP) that I have been working on via Simhubs tone generation. It is possible with a lot of time/effort, that I can monitor the audio output generated from a specific car's, engine character.

The reason is to create an advanced, Simhub based RPM/SPEED set of effects that tonally match well with the specific car driven. This then can be sent to transducers and exciters to generate, felt vibrational energy and audible harmonics that match well with the car's engine sounds. In doing this we, generate a 3D type audio/vibration experience from the cockpit that aligns with what you hear from the cars engine sounds.

Because Simhub gives us full control of mapping effects to any channels we want, then yes in this scenario we can place the accompanying felt engine energy and audible harmonics to the front or rear tactile using whatever volumes we want to apply to suit front-rear or mid-engine mounted cars.

From my own perspective in pushing tactile further, this is one element we can apply to give different cars more unique felt sensations and not just typical and sometimes a bit boring tactile effects that feel very similar on all cars.

Currently, however, this level of immersion is something I have not seen anyone manage to accomplish or any Sim cockpit company offers. But who knows, maybe we will see something in the near future?

 

[Norseman]

Here's a good review of the nicest one I've seen. No direct experience but this guy knows his stuff, tough to go wrong with Sennheiser.

Wow, what a great video, that guy is great. And it was perfect for what I was looking for Maddog, not just because of the great info on a very good external card, but also because I'm a VR user as well, and will use all the info he shared in that video. So thanks a bunch Maddog, I really appreciate your helping me out!

 

[Norseman]

Engine sounds are not output as individual effects that we can control but contained within the audio mix. In most racing games 5.1 / 7.1 is rather overrated. Often the center channel is a mono mix of the LR and the .1 channel is underused. Stereo or indeed Quad Surround (front/rear stereo pairs) can be excellent, especially in such a confined area as a sim rig.

If applying a front/rear based fader control, (via software or hardware) this would enable higher/lower volume to the front or rear speakers but it will do this for all sounds, contained within the mix and output to those channels. not just the engine sounds.

Here is an example of a compact potentiometer-based fader control I can recommend that requires no power adapter to adjust the gain how you want on 4 channels.



Creative Solution?
To give you some perspective on the experimentation work I've been developing.
Custom profiles applying my own (IP) that I have been working on via Simhubs tone generation. It is possible with a lot of time/effort, that I can monitor the audio output generated from a specific car's, engine character.

The reason is to create an advanced, Simhub based RPM/SPEED set of effects that tonally match well with the specific car driven. This then can be sent to transducers and exciters to generate, felt vibrational energy and audible harmonics that match well with the car's engine sounds. In doing this we, generate a 3D type audio/vibration experience from the cockpit that aligns with what you hear from the cars engine sounds.

Because Simhub gives us full control of mapping effects to any channels we want, then yes in this scenario we can place the accompanying felt engine energy and audible harmonics to the front or rear tactile using whatever volumes we want to apply to suit front-rear or mid-engine mounted cars.

From my own perspective in pushing tactile further, this is one element we can apply to give different cars more unique felt sensations and not just typical and sometimes a bit boring tactile effects that feel very similar on all cars.

Currently, however, this level of immersion is something I have not seen anyone manage to accomplish or any Sim cockpit company offers. But who knows, maybe we will see something in the near future?

Really great info Mr Latte! Thank you very much!

 

[Klingomucingo]

Here is an example of a compact potentiometer-based fader control I can recommend that requires no power adapter to adjust the gain how you want on 4 channels.

Great to see you back here, Mr Latte! Quick question re your recommended 4 channel splitter/mixer. You mentioned a while ago that you replaced them with another solution (for 8 channels maybe?) Can you share which one that is?

 

[Mr Latte]

Great to see you back here, Mr Latte! Quick question re your recommended 4 channel splitter/mixer. You mentioned a while ago that you replaced them with another solution (for 8 channels maybe?) Can you share which one that is?

I went with some pro audio solutions via digital mixer.
You can use more than one split mix 4, they stack but are also very compact.

An alternative that are 19" rack-mountable with LED meters is the Behringer HA8000 or Behringer HA 6000 units.
I have 3x 6000 units that I really enjoyed having but with the new digital mixer no longer required. I need to offload these on ebay and they are better than the HA8000, in that they also offer bass/treble controls but are limited to 6 channels while the 8000 can handle 8.

 

[Norseman]

Mr. Latte, please let us know when you might be selling those Behringer HA 6000 units on ebay! And thanks again for that great info you shared... You definitely have me thinking on a number of things to try out.

 

[Mr Latte]

Mr. Latte, please let us know when you might be selling those Behringer HA 6000 units on ebay! And thanks again for that great info you shared... You definitely have me thinking on a number of things to try out.

I did have them on here a while back. they have been sitting in storage since.
The Bass control will increase the amplitude/energy of all frequencies below 80Hz.

This means if you have this unit close to your cockpit, you not only can see channel activity or clipping, you can control volume and bass output for each individual channel. Its very cool to also see the operation of different effects.

 

[Klingomucingo]

I went with some pro audio solutions via digital mixer.
You can use more than one split mix 4, they stack but are also very compact.

An alternative that are 19" rack-mountable with LED meters is the Behringer HA8000 or Behringer HA 6000 units.
I have 3x 6000 units that I really enjoyed having but with the new digital mixer no longer required. I need to offload these on ebay and they are better than the HA8000, in that they also offer bass/treble controls but are limited to 6 channels while the 8000 can handle 8.

 

[Klingomucingo]

Two Split Mix 4 with 8 Channels would be similar priced to (a new) Behringer HA 6000 with 6 channels - both would give the option to ajust on the fly, so I wonder whats best to choose (I would eventually also have my iPad with AUM in reach..).

 

[Mr Latte]

Two Split Mix 4 with 8 Channels would be similar priced to (a new) Behringer HA 6000 with 6 channels - both would give the option to ajust on the fly, so I wonder whats best to choose (I would eventually also have my iPad with AUM in reach..).

Heres a tip, I would not have used these if they were not beneficial or had cool features and benefits to the tactile.

Split Mix 4 does not offer LED which is very handy to see how different effects from Simhub are operating. It also does not offer BASS/TREBLE controls.
This is not the same as just increasing gain level. It can also show if any effects settings are causing clipping based on the controls applied within Simhub.

Another example is using these with 5.1 audio in how it is operating over the different channels. Now you can see subwoofer activity, center channel or how rear channels are used compared to fronts from the source output. With the ability to apply extra bass/treble how you please to each individual channel all on the fly. This can be for speaker usage or if you were duplicating the primary audio output from PC to apply this for "Game Audio" based tactile which often, really needs low bass boost and lowering the treble to work better within the performance of the transducer used.

The other primary benefit with the HA6000 is that you can get creative.
As it is also a mixer for two input sources, it is possible with the correct cables to "combine" if you wanted for tactile purposes lets say a transducer or upto 6 transducers operating with a mix of both "Simhub" effects and "Game Audio". Here you can define how much of source A or Source B comes through the output mix. So as a hardware device it is also excellent for people interested in experimenting with tactile.

I am actually shocked that very few people bought the HA6000 units as they were highlighted on the tactile thread several times
For the little money they are (even new) they are superb bits of hardware.

 

[Norseman]

I did have them on here a while back. they have been sitting in storage since.
The Bass control will increase the amplitude/energy of all frequencies below 80Hz.

This means if you have this unit close to your cockpit, you not only can see channel activity or clipping, you can control volume and bass output for each individual channel. Its very cool to also see the operation of different effects.

That's good price for those Mr. Latte... too bad I'm in the US as I'm sure the shipping would make it way over the $150 from Amazon.

One other question, that's somewhat related, I was wondering if for all race sims, it's best to use the 24-bit 48000.0 audio format? That's what I've always been told to run, but could be mistaken.

 

[MaddogBC]

Wow, what a great video, that guy is great. And it was perfect for what I was looking for Maddog, not just because of the great info on a very good external card, but also because I'm a VR user as well, and will use all the info he shared in that video. So thanks a bunch Maddog, I really appreciate your helping me out!

Happy to help! Honestly as fate would have it I watched that video earlier the same day and that feature stood out. I need a similar solution and will try to source one of those as well. Alex doesn't get much love on you tube and I think he deserves some recognition so win win. His build is similar in ways to my plan and his fabrication skills are impressive. You should check out his upgraded pedal tray.

G'luck!