Audio Card Recommendation Please

Well....from what I can see you're using a pair of HD650's without an amp....big no no

I would recommend any of these:

http://www.amazon.com/AUNE-T1-Amplifier...B00CHIJYGE

https://www.massdrop.com/buy/audioengine-d1 (great deal, but only 4 days to decide)

Get a good DAC/amp, and You'll probably notice a huge improvement in the pianos

^^^ Stay away from DSP....ruins the sound (and pianoteq already does room simulation...double room simulation would be bad.)

Get yourself a good dac/amp and you'll hear the pianos shine

The Xenyx Q502USB isn't an amp, it's a mixer, so it doesn't have high quality, clean output circuits. (Loud, but not clean/detailed)

If you ever want to improve your sound further, I would recommend rolling in a Siemens E88CC or an  Amperex 7308 (or a Phillips JAN 6922 tube if you want to spend less than $20 )

Yeah, I've used it. It's a decent dac/amp, but the VRM software is only amusing for a while. None of the monitors it simulates are of interest to me, and the simulation is mediocre at best.....but maybe I'm just spoiled by my Smyth SVS Realiser

I just got the Aune T1, and it will not open with ASIO4ALL within Pianoteq 5, and it doesn't seem to have it's own ASIO drivers. With Windows Audio, I get 4.4ms latency and only 44,100Hz audio.

Is there an alternative to ASIO4ALL to use with Aune T1?

When the Aune T1 is plugged into my computer, ASIO devices will not open in Pianoteq 5.

Maybe I'll try to restart my computer.

Thanks, Larry

I feel very unsophisticated, but while I'm waiting to get help on getting the Aune T1 to work with ASIO drivers in P5, I've been able to compare in P5 the Behringer Xenyx Q502USB mixer with it's dedicated ASIO drivers with the Aune T1 with Windows Audio, and an almost unnoticeable 4ms latency with 96,000Hz.

Just comparing sound quality, I can't really hear a difference when listening with my Sennheiser HD650 headphones. I don't think that in a blind test, I would be able to tell which is which.

I was able to tell a big difference between headphones last year when I was headphone shopping, but I guess the Audio Card is not as critical as the speakers and headphones are,

Maybe I wouldn't be able to get a job as a studio engineer.

Yes. With newest version of ASIO4ALL and newest version of P5. When the Aune T1 is on and plugged into my computer, I cannot get ASIO4ALL to open in the Options menu of P5. I get an error message that the device is not available.

I guess that since the Aune T1 with Windows Audio doesn't sound any better IMO than my Xenyx audio card with ASIO, I'll return the Aune T1. Maybe it would sound noticeably better if I let the tube burn in, but since I can't take advantage of low latency ASIO, it doesn't make sense for me to keep the card.

Thanks, however.

Of course I did! I spent a lot of time trying to tweak things. I even found another ASIO driver (that cost $49, but I downloaded a demo version). It didn't work with Pianoteq, and when I uninstalled it, it also took away my computer's ability to recognize the Aune T1. It now shows a generic USB volume.

It was dumb for me to spend time on this because I didn't hear any improvement over what I'm getting. Maybe there would be something noticeable with the burn in of the tube, or if I upgraded to an expensive tube.

I think I'll stick with what I have. It's definitely good enough for me to get lost in the music. And it's got inputs for a mic w/ phantom power, and another set of stereo ins, the headphone output can go so loud, I could blow my ears off, so I don't see why I would need a headphone amp.

I start to think about the Victrola days. People would cry tears or whoop it up when they heard a scratchy record played on one of those things.

Today, an audiophile can be listening to a magnum opus on a $50,000 system, and instead of enjoying the amazing fidelity, he's thinking, "Maybe it would sound better if I bought the speaker cables that are covered with gemstones that promise to increase the harmonic resonance."

Differences between audio interfaces are mainly stability, latency and noise. Latency is largely irrelevant for playback (we are usually talking about absolute differences of less than 5-10 ms). If the Behringer is stable and quiet, why not. Apart from that, there could be aliasing distortion if the manufacturer really does not now what they are doing, but let's hope this is not the case with Behringer.

As a rule of thumb, most audio interfaces need an external amp when the headphones have more than 80 Ohms. Not a hard rule, but sums up my experiences in that regard.

...for recording purposes, I would never ever use Behringer equipment anyway. Their monitors are actually rather nice (the 'Thruth' series), and a USB audio thingy purely for playback purposes, why not. But recording? Nope. Steinberg, Focusrite, maybe Tascam, maybe Zoom. Not Behringer. But that's just my $0.02.

Edit: that 1 sample difference is apparently a known problem of the used DAC (a TI PCM290x). It is rather telling that Behringer have not compensated for this, as the problem is even documented by Texas Instruments and is rather easily corrigible in the driver. However, in practice it should not be too much of a problem and it can of course be corrected in the computer, if the user knows about it.