I got some great 'straight' info about the SB 64 Gold and SB PCI128 cards
from the OSS-Linux people at http://www.opensound.com/index.html so I thought that I would pass it along in case anybody does an archive search with the same problem sometime down the road..
Hi,
16bit full duplex audio is only supported on PCI128.
We do support full duplex on the SB AWE64s but when doing full duplex, recording and playback fall back to 8bit dma (you still can record 16bit audio!).
In the SB AWE64 the play channel is 16bit dma and the record channel is only 8bit DMA.
We recommend the SB PCI128. But if you need MIDI support, we recommend the AWE64 since there is no onboard MIDI synth hardware on the PCI128 and you have to resort to the SoftOSS software MIDI synth which doesn't sound as good as the hardware based EMU8000 wavetable synth on the AWE64.
Additionally, on the SB AWE64 Gold, we do support the S/PDIF output port.
best regards Tech support
4Front Technologies
4035 Lafayette Place, Unit F, Culver City, CA 90232, USA.
Tel: (310) 202 8530 URL: www.opensound.com Fax: (310) 202 0496 Email: info@opensound.com