sound card which handles 100% of the audio processing?

[emptypond]

I am looking into the M-Audio Delta Audiophile 24/96 for looping. I edit video and I need to be able to record dialogue at home. This card has what I need for that, but I thought I'd ask here to see if it will also handle the sound playback processing so the CPU doesn't have to

I am maxing out my CPU already with HD editing. When you edit you thow clips onto a timeline much like audio editing and move them around, clip them add effects to them, stretch them. Also you transition from one to the other where at times you see both clips. NLEs (non-linear editors) will then have to render the frames you are asking for every time you want to previews how it looks like after adjustments. You are previewing everything constantly since you look at it and decide you need to change this and that a bit, and right away you hit play to see how it looks. Imagine how much work it is when each of your frames needs to be generated by reading two 1280 x 720 or 1920 x 1080 pixels, then changing the color on each one of those pixels and creating an average for each of the resulting pixels from the two color corrected ones. All 24-30 times each second.

In my NLE of choice (Sony Vegas) the video is 2D (as most NLEs are) so you are using your CPU and not your GPU. If audio is processed by the CPU then I wonder if there is a card out there that might take up this task completely so the CPU has to worry about the video.

Because of this I would love to find a card that would handle 100% of the audio if they exist.

(this was taken from another forum, if anyone can shed some light on this subject that would be great)

[Pitch Black]

As I understand it, the RME PCI/PCMCIA series of audio cards/interfaces do a great deal of audio processing on the card. It's one of their selling points. I can't say if it's ALL, though.

As comensurate with price/performance, the RME drivers are INCREDIBLY stable, and audio very high quality.

[m:o]

The RME Hammerfall DSP series has got a DSP which handles the audio stream inclusive all routings. It ensures the audiodata stream to be fluid, regardless if there are 2ins and 2outs in use or the full amount of channels at the same time. Makes it light on the cpu, plus maybe the best drivers around (saves cpu too).

http://www.rme-audio.de

[nebulae]

I think the question is whether all audio processing (including effects) are done on the card. The answer for RME and Maudio, and most other cards is NO. You need specialized cards like Pro Tools or UAD or Powercore cards, where effects are coded to run on the hardware. And even then, there is some CPU overhead. And they're all freakin' expensive!

Your best option is to run good drivers like RME on a fast dual core machine, and you should do fine.