Phantom power in PCIe Sound Card

[marcos150591]

Hello guys, I built a desktop to produce heavily VST dependent music, with Ableton, who recommends a cpu with as many cores and threads as we can afford. The chosen processor is AMD (ThreadRipper 1950x) and as far as I am concerned AMD does not support Asio drivers, which leave me very few options regarding audio interfaces with low latency. One solution I found is PCIe sound cards. But my questions are:

1) How PCIe cards feed condenser mics? Do they have built-in 48v phantom power?
2) Will I need to buy a separate preamp?

[BertKoor]

as far as I am concerned AMD does not support Asio drivers

Who told you that, where did you read it? Because that is total bollox.

There is no audio interface on the market that says on the box: "Intel CPUs only, our Asio driver won't work on AMD"
Either you misunderstood something, or you can educate me plz.....

How PCIe cards feed condenser mics? Do they have built-in 48v phantom power?

This question has no generic answer. Each model is different. Look at the specs. These will tell things like this.
Most have line inputs only and no XLR plugs for mics at all. Some have 12V phantom power.

[marcos150591]

There is no audio interface on the market that says on the box: "Intel CPUs only, our Asio driver won't work on AMD"
Either you misunderstood something, or you can educate me plz.....

Hi man, I want your belief to be the right one but...
1) Zoom U22 says on its box says "Intel chipset is highly recommended". (I have this one and it does not work at all)
2) RME also says "System Requirements: Computer with at least Pentium Core 2 Duo CPU".
3) Apogee Duet: "Computer: Windows PC with Intel Core i3 processor or greater".
Even asio4all does not work with my pc. I really wish I was wrong about Asio incompatibility with AMD chipsets.

[jancivil]

https://www.thomann.de/gb/pci_express_interfaces.html

top of that list states it has phantom power

[planetearth]

There is no audio interface on the market that says on the box: "Intel CPUs only, our Asio driver won't work on AMD"
Either you misunderstood something, or you can educate me plz.....

Hi man, I want your belief to be the right one but...
1) Zoom U22 says on its box says "Intel chipset is highly recommended". (I have this one and it does not work at all)
2) RME also says "System Requirements: Computer with at least Pentium Core 2 Duo CPU".
3) Apogee Duet: "Computer: Windows PC with Intel Core i3 processor or greater".
Even asio4all does not work with my pc. I really wish I was wrong about Asio incompatibility with AMD chipsets.

They list Intel processors because more people are familiar with them. But ask any AMD processor user on KVR (or anywhere else) about ASIO not working with AMD processors, and you'll find it's simply not true. I have helped people on this forum (and a few others) for 10 years now, and I have never run into a situation where ASIO did not work with an AMD processor. Again, it's simply not true.

And while all PCIe cards may not supply phantom power, the ones that do draw it from the computer's power supply. I have an older PCIe E-MU 1820m, and it supplies phantom power to two mic inputs at the same time. The power is drawn from the computer's power supply.

Steve

[BertKoor]

Zoom U22 says on its box says "Intel chipset is highly recommended". (I have this one and it does not work at all)

Have you installed its driver? Was that succesful? Does it work as a Windows audio device? That's just WDM drivers, not ASIO.
Note that it states:

Do not connect the U-22 until installation completes.

So you might have to do some uninstalls first before you try again.

2) RME also says "System Requirements: Computer with at least Pentium Core 2 Duo CPU".
3) Apogee Duet: "Computer: Windows PC with Intel Core i3 processor or greater".

Those are blanket statements, they don't want users with a Pentium 60MHz complaining it won't handle any projects. I dare to say that the audio device by itself will work on sub-par hardware.

asio4all does not work with my pc.

Did you report the problem or did further actions to diagnose it?
See http://www.asio4all.org/faq.html

Q: It does not work, what should I do?

A: Keep in mind that a statement like 'it does not work' only means that it does not currently work for _you_! Given the variety of audio hardware and system configurations out there, chances are indeed that ASIO4ALL may either not work on your system at all or that it may not work with certain applications while with others it does. If the prospect of getting it to work still seems tempting enough, you are asked to report your findings and include as much information as possible, including your OS, CPU, audio application that is causing problems, what exactly the problem is, your audio hardware and driver details. If you think that your audio hardware has an unusual feature and you suspect that it may have something to do with the issue, you should mention this as well. Simply put: if _you_ were asked to fix something, what information would _you_ want to be given? You are further asked to run this little debug utility on your system. It enumerates your WDM audio stuff into a plain text file 'EnumA4A.txt' which you are supposed to send back to me along with your error report. This may help me perform the forensics. In return, you will receive the privilege of being bothered with numerous test/debug versions for as long as there is hope or until your problem is fixed. Something to try on your own is to check your hardware manufacturer's Web site for driver updates and make sure you have the latest service pack installed for your OS.

[Kaine]

All that's happened here is a poor choice of phrasing. ASIO is a Protocol, it'll work on whichever platform.

The problem, however, isn't ASIO it's the USB controller in the hardware in question.

Yes, the Zoom USB controller doesn't like a lot of AMD hardware a fact it openly states on the box. 370X boards in particular from recent memory I found just didn't to deal with Zoom kit most of the time. That said it changes from range to range and the 470X implementations have gotten better with wider compatibility this time around.

You find Intel controllers on both PC's and Macs' and I've got this theory that a number of firms out there might just be boot camping their Macs to test PC drivers. It doesn't really help them that the Intel USB implementation has been the same for years now and AMD keep letting different firms work on their native implementation. ASMedia ports on Intel boards are generally the ones that you avoid like the plague with audio kit and those guys were given the keys to the gate with Ryzen boards. There was even a number of stories before Ryzen launched about it being delayed due to how badly they screwed up the initial implimentation of the USB3.1 controller.

[marcos150591]

Hello everyone. I found the problem and you were all correct. The problem is the always troublesome sweety Ableton! Coded so poorly, it does not accept Asio because it is faulty on its own right... in the same machine I decided to download REAPER and everything was running perfect. Asio works like a charm, it is this piece of trouble called Ableton being the poorly coded Daw it is. i hate it. Thank you everybody for the replies, it meant a lot.
Regards,
Marcos

[RichieWitch]

Congrats on getting it to work.

Personally, I was never able to get my Zoom u22 to work with my Intel laptop loaded with Ableton. I bought the u22 for a long road trip because it was cheap and portable. But considering Ableton Live worked flawlessly with the eight other audio interfaces I've owned, I blame Zoom.