I'm pretty ignorant about the performance of sound cards and what to expect from them and this one has me stumped. The card specs S/N of 89 dB but recordings clearly show noise at about -50 dB. That would be bad, but I'm recording speech and music and to have speech peaks not distort, I often have to run voice around -15 dB, giving me effectively 35 dB S/N.

It's an "Instant Music" RDX-150 by ADS Tech, no longer available. It has analog and optical ins and outs and a USB connection, also for in and out and is powered by the USB connection. It has no volume control on it.

During recording using Audiologic or Audacity, the noise floor is clearly visible on the meter and waveform views. I've used this with two different ThinkPads and a Dell desktop, and the noise is there with all of them. The audio from the two Thinkpads is way too hot for the software programs, so I use an analog line level V/C to lower the audio input, which is the Tape Out from a Mackie board. And the level is not the same on the two PCs. I have to adjust the analog V/C differently for the two computers.

As to other details, that noise is there all the time, whether the analog V/C is up or not; disconnecting the RCAs makes the noise level rise. At the moment I don't have a good way to play them back on a good system so I can't tell you what the noise sounds like.

Any comments on this whole thing? I need lower noise and have no experience with external sound cards other than this inexpensive thing. Thanks in advance!

A good external sound card should not be anywhere near as bad as you are reporting. So my guess is it is either defective or it was a really cheap POS even when new.

Buy a new one. Hint: Spend at least $50 or more. All the ones below that look like junk that will give the same problems. And get a brand name: Creative, ASUS, etc.

I think it was $50 at the time, and it was given to me. Lesson learned: use it right away and characterize its performance.

Brand names. Hmmm. It has a brand name, ADS Tech, which means no more or less than Creative or ASUS. Since I don't buy sound cards, all brand names are brand names to me. Are you saying I should stick with those two brands? Can you expand on "etc."?

I use this. I use it to record vinyl through Audacity plus it has a nice DAC in it and handles most Hi-Rez formats. Great specs, sounds great. Paid $125 about 1.5 years ago.

[Link: asus.com]

Google Search Link
[Link: google.com]

Well, that's all over the place at $200 and as low as $165... time to butte the billet, I guess.

Heh. In computing since 1988, I've never heard of ADS Tech. Google doesn't even give me a company website when I type the name in.

But I sure have heard of Creative and ASUS, and so has Google. :-)

If you want a studio quality set up, look at pre sonus...
[Link: presonus.com]

$145 at new egg

How are you searching for this piece? I googled it once and got over 2500 links, including a user's manual.

Bypass the analog VC without signal, but still connected to the mixer- is the noise still present? Why can't you use the level controls on the mixer to decrease the level to the ADS Tech module? Read pg 2, for setting input levels-

[Link: manualslib.com]