rEalm's 1820m Review
2004-05-26 by erik_magrini@Baxter.com
1820m Digital Audio System (DAS) Well, finally got my 1820m in the mail today, so on to the review. The 1820m comes in a nice, well-packaged box The unit consists of two PCI cards, the 1010 and the Sync Daughter card, along with the Audio Dock, an outboard 1/2 rack unit dedicated to most of the I/O that connects to the 1010 via a Cat5 ethernet cable. There is mention on the Emu site and in some of their ads that the Audio Dock is externally powered, though this is not entirely true. The Audio Dock actually recieves it's power from the computer PSU, which is then transferred over the ethernet cable, not an external power supply unit. Just thought that bears pointing out, though in practice I don't think it's an issue. The cards and their connectors feel sturdy, though it was the Audio Dock that caught my eye first. Stamped with Emu's big "E" on top, the dock is all metal with cooling vents on the sides and bottom. It feels solid, yet not too heavy if you wanted to use it on the go. The front and back are actually different than I expected from seeing the pictures online. They're actually a clear plastic, with all of the connectors' labels placed behind this. I think it looks very nice personally, better than the pictures online make it seem, and it drew positive, unsolicited comments from everyone that saw it (mine does have a bit of profanity in the lower left corner though). However, if this was to be used live or as a portable interface (though with a PCI card interface, this obviously isn't Emu's priority), I would tend to think it or the corners would get cracked or chipped if one wasn't careful. It's not really a big deal in the studio though, and it only really stands out because everything else is so solidly built. The phono RCA inputs also have a ground screw to ground the turntable to, which is a nice addition. However, the screw itself isn't a thumbscrew like you'd find on most modern mixers, but one that requires you to have a screw driver handy. Not a big deal, but I think a thumb screw would have been more practical for those musicians who may not have turntable just for their sound card. Then again, I'm a DJ who's used to DJ mixers, so it could just be me. Installation is pretty straight forward, the PCI cards go in any free PCI slots you have in your PC, paying attention to IRQ assignments for the best performance. You actually don't need to install the Daughter Sync card if you don't need it. Since it only contains the Word Clock I/O, SMPTE I/O, and MTC Out ports (none of which I need), I did not install it in my PC. It should be noted though, that the Sync card doesn't actually draw any power or bandwidth from the PCI bus. A small 1cm section of it is all that rests in the PCI slot, it's secured via the PCI slot screw to the PC. It doesn't access the PCI bus at all. The software installation was equally easy, everything went as planned as did the latest driver update Emu has posted on their website. The majority of the software is dedicated to the PatchMix DSP, which is basically the internal digital mixer. This is very powerful software, that lets you not only create input and output strips for the actual physical I/O in the DAS system, but also ASIO I/O strips (up to 32 of them) to use as send and returns in your music software of choice, for instance. Each channel strip can also be routed to anywhere else in the system, physical or ASIO. There's simply too many possibilites to list, so I'll sum it up (no pun intended) by just saying that you can route anything to anything you can think of with this software. It turns all your ahrdware and software into one big virtual modular synth. It's the most flexible routing software I've ever used or seen. It does come with a lot of preconfigured setups too, great for beginner who may not be sure what they need, though you definitely still need to read the manual to get the most of it. In addition to all of that, you also get effects that can be inserted anywhere on any channel, all of which draw power from the DSP resources of the 1010 card, not the CPU in your PC. Each channel can have an unlimited number of Effects slots. However, it should be noted that DSP resources are limited, you can only insert two reverbs before you run out of DSP resources for instance. However, that's the extreme situation, you can run also 10 of the 4 band EQs before you run out of DSP power. You can also insert test tone generators (sine wave, noise), peak LED meters, and additional trim controls too. And all of the effects in a channel can be saved as a Multi-effect too. Very flexible, very powerful, and there's still way more features than I'm going to list in this review, check out the downloadable PDF manual for a full run down, it would take me too long. How do the effects sound? Well, about like the rest of Emu's effects from their other gear to be honest. Not bad by any means, but you won't be ditching your Waves plug ins in favor of these. My guess is that they culled the effects from their RFX sampler cards, but that's just a guess. These are certainly useable, and I do hope Emu continue to add new effects types to the pallette. If you don't have a lot of third party plug ins, these will be a welcome addition. So, how does the 1820m sound? Great. As in really, really good. The output is super hot, and the A/D stage is incredible. I tested the internal noise floor at -116dB using Wavelab, compared to -96dB of my Echo Layla24! A 20dB difference! This is one of those peices of gear that makes more of a difference than you would expect, everything sounds like it's more "open" and has more depth. Stereo imaging is superb as well. You can really hear the exact placement of instruments in the stereo field. Emu have done a great job of making a terrific sounding card, I still can't get over how cheap this is. I tried to run an effects heavy (via a UAD-1 card running at 80%) mix in SX using the lowest latency (2ms), and it literally brought my system to it's knees. Bumping it up to 4ms helped a lot (still lots of crackles), though it wasn't until I had it set to 7ms that things were fine. Still, very good performance and perfectly acceptable for playing softsynths in real-time (anything below 12ms is good for this). Hard to believe Emu packed all this quality into a $500 sound card! The only negative thing I can say, concerns the WDM drivers that come with the card. These are the drivers Windows will use when you play Windows Media Player, your system sounds, even iTunes. Some people, myself included, have had trouble with the card playing very quiet intermittent crackling noises when your PC accesses the hard drive, and sometimes just when it's idling and you're not doing anything. It's not loud, but it is noticeable, and it doesn't always happen. I have yet to pin down exactly what's causing this, yesterday it was doing it constantly, today I've only heard it a few times. And just to repeat, this only happens when you're not using the ASIO drivers that most software music applications use. I do know that Emu is well aware of this problem, and it's their primary bug fix right now. So we should see new drivers that address this in the neat future. Speaking of crackling, I had no issues with audible digital noise artifacts when connecting my PX-7 to the 1010 card via SPDIF. So for those of you using Command Staions, this could be good news. (though admittedly this problem can also be caused by grounding issues with the digital out on the XX-7's too) At this point I was going to start reviewing the Emulator X as well, but I think that one deserves more than a brief look, so I'll have to post that review in a couple of days. As always, if you have any specific questions about anything in this review, or points I may have missed, feel free to contact me with any questions. With that, here's my list of things I'd like to see, or improvements that could be made. rEalm's Wishlist: 1820m: - Thumb screw for the turntable ground wire. - Monitor volume control knob (would make mixer-less setups SO much easier). - A rack ear option. Yes you can mount it on a rack tray, but that's not always ideal and it's ultimately more expensive and takes up more room. Patchmix DSP: - BETTER WDM DRIVERS! - More ledgible fonts for the channel strips and effects, mimicing crappy hardware designs (cheapo LEDs) in software is a step in the wrong direction IMVHO. These are very hard to read, even on my 19" monitor running at 1024x768. - Better effects, more "out there" effect types, the included ones are what you find in every multi-effects unit made since 1980. - In a dual monitor system, right clicking to call up context senstitive menus launches them on the primary monitor only. Frustrating when you have the DSP panel on the other monitor. - RMS meters option on the channel strips. - K-system meters on the Main Mix channel. Mastering quality A/D/A deserves mastering quality meters. See www.digido.com for more info. - The possibility to cut and paste effects from one channel to another. Right now you can only MOVE (drag and drop) them one at a time, no cut and paste support for single or multiple effects slots. - A DSP meter to let you know how much DSP power you have left. Oh yeah, anyone wanna buy an Echo Layla 24? $400 + shipping. Email me if you're interested :) Peace and beats, rEalm http://www.soundclick.com/innerportal The information transmitted is intended only for the person(s)or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or legally privileged material. Delivery of this message to any person other than the intended recipient(s) is not intended in any way to waive privilege or confidentiality. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you receive this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer. For Translation: http://www.baxter.com/email_disclaimer [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]