Stereo Tool

Hello,

Last weekend i was busy by making a new preset, whit the beta 4.20. Unfortunately my computer stopped working, i think my motherboard is dead. It's not a big issue, because i would like to have a new motherboard anyhow, because my old (now dead) motherboard doesn't supports core 2 duo, so i was running stereotools on a p4 2.8 ghz (and i was using, except of stereo and rds coding, all of the parts of stereotool so my cpu runs at 80 / 90 % )

So i was looking for a new motherbord. I didn't used stereo and rds from stereotools in the past, because i had already a (hardware) stereocoder. However i do like to have rds too and i think the build in stereocoder is better then my cheap SPI coder

I saw a motherboard whit a Realtek ALC883. I saw on the help page of stereotool.com that this one supports stereo and rds output. But the following text was added:

- Realtek ALC883 / Realtek HD Audio ?
I have received conflicting reports about this card. One user reported getting only partial stereo sounds, and no RDS. It was later reported to work however if you set it to 192 KHz in the Audio card settings (see this image, submitted by forum user halfdead).

What i make up from the text is that the Realtek ALC883 does works. But i didn't know it sure.
I want be really sure that realtek alc883 works before i buy my new motherboard.

My questions are:

- who could tell me that the Realtek ALC883 is working good whit stereotool, (so not only stereo or other strange things)
- And another question: What i've found (i might be wrong) that there is a Realtek ALC883: 6 channel one, and there is a Realtek ALC883: 8 channel one. Does this makes a different for using it whit stereotools?
- Is the soundquality good? no sissing souds, or just having a bad sound. (i don't think so, i googled and read that realtek is one of the best sounding onboard soundcards. tell me if this is true)

thanks in advance!

best Realtek Chip is ALC889.

ALC883 will work good with Stereo tool it has 192kHz output but 96kHz input.
Anyway you need output.
i found that chip on Biostar Tpower I45 (good board!)

I recommend you to find board with 888 or 889 chip.

Check this: http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/sea ... eyword=883

Thank you

Allright, i will look for a motherboard wich has Realtek Chip ALC889. This one should be perfect for stereo & rds whit stereotool.

But witch processor would you recommend? Should a Celeron E1200 be fast enough? or is a Pentium Dual core better?

I think 512mb or 1 gb memory is enough, isn't?

thanks in advance agian

If you can, avoid celeron CPUs!

Get some Gigabyte P35 or P45 Board and E5200/5300 cpu. Ofcourse if you can, you can get E7200/E7300 ...
But E5x00 will do the job.
Our E5200 is at max 50% cpu usage (both cores)
For memory make DualChannel, 2x512MB or 2x1024MB. It,s not about amount of memory but speed.

Here is our conf. for transmitter,

- Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3 (with realtek 889A) [we use juli@)
- Intel Dualcore E5200 @ 3GHz (little oc-ed)
- 2x1024MB memory @ 900MHz
...

Hi Honda mb,

The amount of memory doesn't really matter. Stereo Tool requires about 40-50 MB at the moment, if you have enough free memory that should suffice. Future versions might require a bit more or less (probably more) memory in the future.

Make sure though that you are using 2 strips of memory, so the memory can be accessed using dual channel (which is twice as fast!).


About the CPU: I've looked up the E1200, and it seems to be really slow:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

Speed listed there is '899', the CPU I'm testing with (Intel Q9450) has a speed of '3975'...

Now I'm only using 2 of the 4 cores, but I still need more than 50% of both cores that I use. Assuming that you want to run in "HQ" mode, with FM output (which is pretty heavy since part of the processing needs to be done at 705.6 kHz!), you really need more than that.

I have seen Stereo Tool (4.10, without the bass limiter) run succesfully on an E5200 (dual core) which has a speed of '1283'. I *think* that was with FM output, but I should re-check to make sure.
(That makes sense, I'm only using 2 cores of my quad core so for comparison I should use a speed of about 2000, which is not THAT far from 1283. I expect it to be very heavy louded though, although I seem to recall that it was somewhere just below 60%).

Here's a graphic display of the speeds of current high end CPU's:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
Keep in mind that CURRENTLY for quad cores only 2 cores are used.


If you want to use it for a number of years to come, also keep in mind that future versions MIGHT require more (or less) CPU power. I really don't know what kind of new filters I'm going to think of in the next few years. A little over a year ago Stereo Tool could run in High Quality mode on a Pentium 4 (speed 325)...

I did used Motherboard Realtek 883 with AMD Sempron 2,2 Ghz CPU and old 512MB RAM (667 MHz single channel) at 24/7 basis. The load from stereo tool was 25-30% (only encoding feed for FM transmiter).

You can hear the quality here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC-I7wgDOfY
Don't be confused by the video, RDS works just fine (it was turned off in this video), as so is the stereo. Even with this transmitter i achieved a good quality FM output with reasonable coverage.