good stereo soundcard or external interface?

[hollywood_steve]

Although I have had it explained to me several times, my brain has a hard time grasping the fact that digital products are unlike analog gear regarding one issue: with analog gear, I usually prefer to purchase equipment that offers very few features, but high quality. When it comes to digital, it seems that features follow quality - in other words, looking for top quality digital gear with minimal features is not a productive way to spend one's time.

This issue has come up again as I am starting to look for either a soundcard or an external interface for a new PC. This PC will not be a DAW, it will be primarily an archiving device for the swap-able SCSI drives from my Genex recorder. I need a system that will allow me to load one of these drives, dump the files to the computer's hard disk and send the empty drive back to the Genex.

This dump to PC will not be in preparation for editing, it will be for final archiving. For this purpose, I almost decided to go really minimalist and not even include a soundcard. But as I use CD Architect for the preparation of CDs (on another PC), I thought it might be useful for this computer to be able to accept 2ch worth of both analog and digital I/O. (again for archiving, not worth discussing the details of why, its just useful......)

So I thought that I would look for a simple stereo soundcard that offers two channels of high quality analog I/O on XLRs and two channels of AES format 24/96 digital I/O. That seemed like a reasonable request in today's world of 48ch interfaces, but I've spent two days looking without success. Does something like this exist, or do I have to buy some complex multichannel interface just to get XLRs and AES digital I/O? I really don't need any Midi capabilities, DSP or any kind or any other stuff that manufacturers assume that we would want. Just a high quality stereo interface.

It's for a new PC, so Firewire, USB or any other connection will be OK. Any suggestions? Thanks.

[fifthcircle]

Lynx L22. http://www.lynxstudio.com/lynxl22.html

Does 192KHz, 2 channels Analog on XLRs, 2 channels AES, word clock. Good sounding converters on the card, too...

Same card (basically) as the Lynx 2 but without the time code I/O and fewer channels.

Lynx also has great driver support.

I don't think you'll find what you are looking for in a firewire/usb interface.

--Ben

[aussie_techie]

i used to use an M-Audio Audiophine for a few years - i moved up to bigegr and better things and now another family member uses it for good sound on his home videos and analogue to digital dubs
good little card especially for the price
all depends on how much you want to spend but as the computer is for archiving i would go for the M-Audio - cheeper than some but may cost a lil more than some others but i never once had a problem with the hardware - people i know who went for some of the cheeper cards have had constent problems with them
M-Audio update their drives every few months for every new thing MS does with windows - so its a pretty sound investment

i wouldnt go for any low end card that has 192KHz because all the cheep 192KHz converters i have heard suck - but then mabey they have been inproved in more recent times
and who realy needs 192KHz

just my $0.02 based on my experences with small format cards

[A Fak]

I agree the lynx cards are real nice and I know somebody that just bought a pro tools setup that is selling his lynxTWO (2in /6out with 2ch's of dig in and out)and some other stuff real cheap. let me know if your intrested.