ESI Juli@ and ALSA

rushi · n00b Joined: 15 Apr 2004 Posts: 17 Location: Finland

Does anyone of you have any experiences with this soundcard?

It looks really great with balanced and unbalanced I/O's and specs are rather good also.

ALSA Soundcard Matrix says that it have Envy24HT (ICE1724) chip and could work. There's also many(?) other cards with ICE1724 supported.
I found one good review on web: http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/esi-julia/
Picture shows that chip is VT1721 (Envy24HT-S) made by VIA/ICEnsemble. Could it possibly work with ICE1724 driver?

So, will I propably waste my money, or should I buy something like M-Audio Audiophile 2496 instead? (I'm looking for a "good" card, don't suggest cheap shit for me please

just don't have enough money for RME Digi96/8 PAD (or similar) right now

)

rushi · n00b Joined: 15 Apr 2004 Posts: 17 Location: Finland

Blah, this card looks just too suspicious, that Envy24HT-S chip seems to be a little crappy(compared to other Envy24 - chips) and ALSA support is really big questionmark (my kernel (2.6.7-gentoo-r9) has driver for ICE/VT1724/1720, Juli@ has VT1721). ESI technical support told me, that atleast 1724 driver won't work because they have different codec controls and GPIO settings.

The hardware designs is really poor also (like cheap DACs/opamps and DSP's clock with a lot of jitter). Some measured graphs had also some weird peaks.

Just wanted to post this for information, if someone is also thinking to buy this card. If someone gets it working or already did, please tell me your experiences

I'll save some money and go for RME.

AnXa · Apprentice Joined: 06 Apr 2004 Posts: 250

I don't know if it matters anymore, but Juli@ is an exelent soundcard that works under Linux too. It's got it's problems under linux, but it works well I gurantee that for you.

I'v got Juli@ and I like it a lot.

To talk about it's problems... well you can get OSS, but forget easy set up phases... ALSA well, under AMD64 newer ALSA causes lots of Kernel Panics when shutting ALSA service down... I don't know when ever I have some sort of problem or not, but it was like that after 1.10 alsa and did that thing in fedora,debian and gentoo...

but when it works you'll get plenty of features, you can do allmost everything you would do with Creative card. Besides Juli@ is semi-professional soundcard. ALSA controls needs their own specified .alsasoundrc but that's not actually even a problem anymore. Envy24(HT) is good chip, at least it is better than those crappy AC'97 chips.

Have fun. I hope this helps you.

PS. If you are home user that you don't compose music and do audio renders for vocals (like I do) or anything like that I suggest you to take a look to creative xFi cards since they are made for gamers and home users. Or since sound card is the one part in computer you don't need to upgrade every year I also suggest that if you have limited amount of money then get Audigy4 or Audigy2 from somewhere. A4 is best in quality/prise but I don't have damm idea about it's linux compability. My brother has A4Pro and he said that it doesn't work under linux, but he is not linux user so I really cannot say anything about that subject.

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gimpel · Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 9:59 pm Post subject:

it's not fully supported yet by ALSA but it outperforms my m-audio audiophile 2496... sounds very good, superb latency, high buffer size. the DAC controls in alsamixer work since alsa 1.0.10. didn't try the optical and spdif i/o yet, but i think it doesn't work yet.

oh, and it DOES use the envy24ht aka ice1724 driver!

but if you want a fully supported card then better get an m-audio audiophile or other delta series card, those kick ass too, and you got envy24control. the alsa devs said they will never write such a tool for envy24ht as it has no level meters, so it would be an overkill :/
to be honest, i bought myself the m-audio one, and got the juli@ for testing purposes for free. i wouldn't buy the juli@ until it is fully supported.
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AnXa · Apprentice Joined: 06 Apr 2004 Posts: 250

Relax man, Linux support is all about waiting.

(<-joke, yeah I know that not all features in juli@ are supported, but it works well enought when it works.)
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The idea isn't about how do you see or hear it, it's about how do you experience it...

gimpel · Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 9:58 am Post subject:

AnXa · Apprentice Joined: 06 Apr 2004 Posts: 250

Guess what I did when I found out that Juli@ was partially supported by ALSA...

I went and bought it immidiedly from thomann.

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The idea isn't about how do you see or hear it, it's about how do you experience it...

rushi · n00b Joined: 15 Apr 2004 Posts: 17 Location: Finland

Well, that's nice to hear

I bought my RME Digi96/8 PAD soundcard about year ago, and I'm really satisfied. It's true professional card, and linux support is excellent, as is sound quality.
IMO, no-one should be suggesting Creative (especially Live! and Audigy - series) cards to anyone, who is looking for GOOD soundcard and I really don't think that Aydigy4 has good quality/price ratio

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gimpel · Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2005 10:36 am Post subject:

LOL... just saw the date of the initial post... a year delay

well RME has been a good choice i'd guess!
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