Xtra Low Frequency Response Soundcard?

[Toby_Z]

Hi.
I'm looking for sound cards or USB/Firewire audio (pref) for use with laptop/desktop PC. The problem is the frequency range (5Hz to 45Hz) as many products filter thsse out.
I need two separate soundcards for separate PC's to perform functions as follows:
1> Analogue signal input (1 channel) in the frequency range 5Hz to 45Hz for signal processing in a PC.
2> Analogue audio signal outputs in the same frequency range(ie 5Hz to 45Hz). I need 6 - 8 individual channels out that can be controlled seperately by software such as Cycling 74's 'Max/MSP' package.
I'd been thinking along the lines of a 5.1 or 7.1 type soundcard for the 2nd purpose - but it's all down to frequency response and channel discretion and I'm having trouble searching.
Anyone have any ideas?

[David Meek]

Toby, let's leave this here for now and see what kind of response you get. If it stays slow, I'll move the thread into our PC forum Tower Of Power.

I can't help much in the way of PC-based questions. Sorry.

[aud19]

Check out cards from M-audio

[Vinny]

Check out cards from M-audio

Their professional cards are somehow ranged within 22Hz+ but not that low. They never spit out the spec for the Revolution but I did 15Hz for tone generator and it was able to reproduce the sound :E . Never get a chance to try any lower than that tho.

[jim777]

We use a M-Audio Delta 1010 for testing surround audio codecs. It has 8 analog inputs and 8 analog outputs - all balanced or unbalanced. It has a 96kHz sampling rate so it should go up to near 46kHz. It sounds as good as the Rotel DVD player we also have. You can "open it" as a multichannel audio card (5.1, 7.1, 8.0, whatever) or as 4 separate stereo audio cards. You can not "open it" as 8 separate mono sound cards with existing software though. Of course, you will be able to get around these limitation I guess.

The specs states "22Hz-22kHz, +0.3/-0.2dB" but it should do 5 to 45k at -3dB without problem.

If we have an idea of what you are trying to do, we could help a lot more

[Toby_Z]

Thanks Jim
I'm not using the soundcard directly for actual audio (as you may have guessed): this will be used to drive Bass speakers to generate standing waves in water.
The speakers are fixed within transparent PVC cone and dish constructions with the dish on top (around 1m dia) containing a shallow water pool.
The wave effects are resonant in relation to dish size so not a great deal of power is required. Dish sizes vary then according to specific frequncy waves to be displayed. I want to use a soundcard for outputting different infrasound frequencies from a PC to a series of these dishes.
Not exactly HiFi.

[jim777]

You would be better looking for a DAC instead of a "sound card". And not a DAC in the audiophile sense, the real thing. These are normally designed to go down to 0Hz because they are not for audio.

I did a quick google for PCI DAC to give you an idea of what I mean:

http://www.locamation.nl/locam01/02_IndustrialComputers/O_Data_Acquistion/06_PCI_Multifunction/PCI_DAC.htm

[Toby_Z]

Thanks Jim.
The DAC might well be the final solution as you suggest. I'm also looking into other I/O interfaces at the moment though such as the MOTU 828, which I'm lead to believe is capable of running 8 channel discretely from PC to 8 analogue outs.
I'll let you know how this turns out.