ASIO hardware recommendations and question re MP3 playback

[jstjohnz]

Hello to the forum,

I am a new user of Madrix and am using it to control a 50x40 RGB LED matrix on my christmas display.

I am using a pixel controller that I have been developing for the past few months and am happy to report that it works perfectly with Madrix; E1.31 input and 16 pixel string outputs.

I have a few questions.

What (reasonably priced) hardware do you recommend that supports ASIO, as far as a PC soundcard?

Can I use an external (USB) soundcard to get ASIO output from an MP3 playback on the PC?

I plan to use the music to light functions extensively, with audio from MP3 playback. Will an ASIO sound card offer a significant improvement in M2L effect quality?

Also, is there a way to trigger an MP3 file playback from within Madrix? If not, what is typically used to create a stand-alone show with MP3 file playback synced to Madrix cues?

Thank you very much,

-jim-

[Wissmann]

Hi Jim,
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the M2L and S2L quality depends on different paramter like capture rate, sample rate, sample resolution and latency.
So for all hardware this means a higher sample rate like 48kHz is better than 22kHz and a higher sample resolution like 16 bit is better than a lower like 8 bit.
For S2L this is not so much important as like as for M2L.
In booth cases the capture rate (how many informations per second) and the latency is very important. A low latency and a high capture rate means the light will be closer to the music.
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Before MADRIX supports the WASAPI standard we recommanded ASIO because of lower latencies. But now with WASAPI support it doesn´t matter which one you choose. Booth have likewise latency.
In case of WinXP we still recommend ASIO because under WinXP WASAPI does not exists.
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It is always difficult to give some hardware recommandations, because it is never possible to test all and if a hardware works on one system very well it doesn´t mean it will work in the same way on a different system.
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Yes! You can use an external USB Audio device with ASIO support.
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No! MADRIX is not able to playback mp3 files!
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The best way to synchronize MADRIX to other is the use of Midi Time Code or remote control MADRIX with DMX/Art-Net/Midi.