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The cards described here were tested. The results can be seen on the detail page.

Please note that these tests are only function tests together with BPM Studio and are no stement on the function of the cards with other software. Even if a card failed the test, it can be suitable for the work with another software. BPM Studio is very demanding on the realtime capabilities of a soundcard.

Imortant notice / error message "unable to open audio device"

Soundkarten in Combination with BPM Studio

ALCATech is constantly testing different soundcards together with the different versions und publishes a summary about that here.

Additionally you can find the latest informations from the soundcard manufacturers Please read the general information before you proceed to the test reviews. All tests published here were done with the latest drivers of the manufacturers. Basically you shouls always download the latest drivers when troubleshooting.

We always recommend using of Direct Sound driver instead of Asio (See below).

For Windows 7 we currently recommend for instance following professional multichannel soundcards:

external:
ESI Audiotrak Maya 44 with 4 In-and Outputs
ESI Audiotrak Gigaport HD with 8 In- and Outputs

intern:
M-Audio Delta 1010
ESI Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1

Please ask you electronic market or have a look online to find these soundcards.

General Information

The 5 virtual devices of BPM Studio can be assigned to up to 5 different soundcards. The assignment is done on the tab Audio I/O in the program options. Generally BPM Studio works with all DirectSound capable soundcards installing a driver for all available channels. Further all cards with WAVE and/or ASIO/EASI drivers are supported but these card have a longer latency time than the ones with DiectSound drivers and because of their driver architecture they tend to produce dropouts when the system ressources are low.

Several sound cards in one PC

(This is concerning all „normal“ soundcards witha stereo output e.g. Soundblaster, Terratec) A sound card driver can ususally address only one soundcard. It is not able to recognize the presence of two equal soundcards in the PC. For this reason generally two different soundcards must be used. In every way the use of a multichannel soundcard is to be preferred because they are much easier to install and are mostly cascadeable.

Test results
Windows98/ME:

Audiotrak

Maya EX7 / 7.1 USB

Maya EX / 5.1 USB

Creative

Soundblaster 16 / 16PCI

Soundblaster PCI 128

Soundblaster AWE 64 Gold

Soundblaster Live! Value

Soundblaster Audigy

Soundblaster Extigy USB

Digigram

VX-pocket (PCMCIA)

Echo Corporation

Egosys

waveterminal U24

Emagic

ENCORE / Pearl Agency

USB Sound Konverter

Fostex

Gadgetlabs

Guillemot

ISIS Maxi Studio

M-Audio

Marian

Numark

RME

Hammerfall DSP 9632

SEKD

Terratec

Test results
Windows2000/XP:

Audiotrak

Maya EX7 / 7.1 USB

Maya EX / 5.1 USB

Creative

Soundblaster 16 / 16PCI

Soundblaster PCI 128

Soundblaster AWE 64 Gold

Soundblaster Live! Value

Soundblaster Audigy

Soundblaster Extigy USB

Digigram

VX-pocket (PCMCIA)

Echo Corporation

Egosys

waveterminal U24

Emagic

ENCORE / Pearl Agency

USB Sound Konverter

Fostex

Gadgetlabs

Guillemot

ISIS Maxi Studio

M-Audio

Marian

Numark

RME

Hammerfall DSP 9632

SEKD

Terratec

Assignement of the system ressources
BPM Studio processes all frames of the mp3 file and therefore requires more ressources than other single MP3 players such as WINAMP(TM). Further BPM Studio offers a wider range of functions than these players and a direct comparison to them makes no sense. For this reason it is essential that each soundcard is assigned to a separate IRQ which is not in use by any other card or PC component. Also the other components like harddisk, CD-ROM drive and graphics card have a high influence on the system's performance. For the professional use it is highly recommended to run BPM Studio solely on the computer.
Latency of the drivers
Latency means the delay between a command such as play, pause or stop and the moment when the soundcard reacts on it e.g. starts playing. Generally these latencies depend on the used driver model or the driver itself. The lower the driver latency is the better it is suitable for exact beat mixing. Kernel driver: 4...13 ms, this driver is definitely the fastest. DirectSound drivers: 20...30 ms, 150...300 ms (!) with emulated drivers MME Wave drivers: 70...180 ms, depending on the selected buffer size in the program options ASIO/EASI drivers: 20...50 ms, the latency is generally set up in the ASIO driver options. As you can see from the list above the kernel driver and the direct sound drivers are to be preferred because both drivers work in the kernel mode of the operating system and are therefore relatively independent from the system resources. The ASIO and WAVE drivers are running quite stable too and are very suitable for background music as in dance schools, pubs a.s.o. BPM Studio supports WAVE drivers because they are available for almost any soundcard and work properly even with NT.
DirectSound Driver
This is the fastest and most stable standard driver. Depending on the hardware configuration toggling between cue and play takes less than 20...30 ms. The sophisticated DJ putting a big weight on exact beat mixing and using the cue and play functions of BPM Studio will prefer this driver model. If the kernel driver is supported by your soundcard it is recommended because of its even lower latency and stable playback.
Kernel Driver
This driver developed by ALCATech adresses the soundcard from a very low level in the kernel mode and provides an extremely high priority with a very short latency of 4...13 ms and highest stability. The kernel driver utilizes the functionality of existing drivers such as Direct sound and therefore works on most soundcards, even on those which could only be run with ASIO or WAVE drivers because of the missing DirectSound drivers and tended to produce dropouts.
ASIO-Driver
This driver developed by Steinberg is designed as an interface for multichannel soundcards. It is a little slower than the direct sound drivers and tends to produce drop-outs as a user mode driver at high resource consumption. This driver is suitable for background music purposes and works quite well. The latency is between 6 and 50 ms and can be adjusted usually on the driver options. For BPM Studio latencies from 20 to 46 ms are recommended otherwise drop-outs can occur. The correct has to be detected by „trial-and-error“. On some of the tested cards ASIO drivers are running unstable.
WAVE-Driver (Wave out)
This is a very stable driver which can be use alternatively to the wave driver but provides hight latency times. On multichannel soundcards without DirectSound or ASIO drivers it is the only way to adress the differnt channels separately. It is very suitable for background music, but not for live DJ's. Latency is between 120...200 ms.