Topic: Zoltrix (Z-Cyber) Nightingale Pro 6 woes

[Gil]

I know a lot of people have had issues with this card, so hopefully someone can help. I installed the card, the drivers, and the applications, but the audio rack/mixer will not allow me to use the S/PDIF tab. Earlier I had the card working while using drivers for another card (M-Audio perhaps), but only the optical input was working properly (when using the coax in, the recordings were pitched much too fast). The reason I'm reinstalling the card is because I began having issues with the optical in as well. Any help would be greatly appreciated, especially since I have a pile of DATs I want to transfer. Thanks. I guess I should mention that I'm running XP.

[dnsacks]

Best of luck -- my nightingale is now sitting in a landfill somewhere -- used to work fine but developed some sort of problem that I couldn't resolve, even after a fresh/clean install of xp, setting up the same PC to dual boot from both xp and win98se, and even trying the card on a different pc.  I needed mine for digital out ONLY and ended up replacing it with a chaintech AV-710, which uses the highly regarded via envy 24pt chipset (and runs a whopping $25 from newegg, etc.).  Out of the box, the chaintech passes 48k bit-perfect digital out, but resamples 44.1k to 48k.  A bios hack enables one to output everything without resampling.  Note -- the chaintech only has an optical out.  THe Maddog Entertainer 7.1 soundcard uses the same chipset and provides a digital in as well as out (optical only) and runs a whopping $36 -- but I digress . . .

Thoughts on getting your setup running -- 1) try the drivers found on the cmedia site, instead of the zoltrix drivers (be sure to first COMPLETELY uninstall the existing drivers), the cmedia drivers are the latest available, 2) be sure the card is set up to operate in 2 channel (not 4 channel) mode as spdif will only work in 2 channel mode, 3) if that doesn't work, you can try the maudio drivers, in  my case that only made things worse.  Maudio drivers are for the dio2448.

Finally, on my setup after not getting anything to work right, I ended up simply transferring dats digitally into my jb3 and then transferring the wavs to my pc for editing.  Worked Great! -- otherwise, I recommend finding an maudio audiophile 2496, etc. which has similarly been proven to work fine for performing bit-perfect x-fers.

[Gil]

Thanks for the tip. I installed the C-Media drivers, tried the S/PDIF in and it still didn't work. I used the update drivers feature in the device manager, tried once again, and praise jeebus it works!

[drewloo]

I needed mine for digital out ONLY and ended up replacing it with a chaintech AV-710, which uses the highly regarded via envy 24pt chipset (and runs a whopping $25 from newegg, etc.).  Out of the box, the chaintech passes 48k bit-perfect digital out, but resamples 44.1k to 48k.  A bios hack enables one to output everything without resampling.  Note -- the chaintech only has an optical out.  THe Maddog Entertainer 7.1 soundcard uses the same chipset and provides a digital in as well as out (optical only) and runs a whopping $36 -- but I digress . . .

hehe, I've been eyeing both of those cards at newegg to put in an a/v pc I'm thinking about building.  I take it you're pretty happy with it?  The Chaintech seems to get great reviews at newegg.

[kfrinkle]

I have had similar problems with my Zoltrix.  I cant even seem to do an analog transfer.  I can listen to my MD recordings going line in on the Zoltrix, they sound just fine.  But when I actually record the signal in Wavelab, it sounds all fucked up.  In fact, when I watch the wav being recorded in CEP, i notice that the wav signal is actually raised a little bit above the horizontal axis.. its very strange... so when I go back to lsiten to it afterwards, it sounds all hissy (more than just the analog transfer phenomena).

[dnsacks]

I needed mine for digital out ONLY and ended up replacing it with a chaintech AV-710, which uses the highly regarded via envy 24pt chipset (and runs a whopping $25 from newegg, etc.).  Out of the box, the chaintech passes 48k bit-perfect digital out, but resamples 44.1k to 48k.  A bios hack enables one to output everything without resampling.  Note -- the chaintech only has an optical out.  THe Maddog Entertainer 7.1 soundcard uses the same chipset and provides a digital in as well as out (optical only) and runs a whopping $36 -- but I digress . . .

hehe, I've been eyeing both of those cards at newegg to put in an a/v pc I'm thinking about building.  I take it you're pretty happy with it?  The Chaintech seems to get great reviews at newegg.

I'm running the Chaintech in my Windoze media center edition a/v pc and I can definitely confirm that it works perfectly @48k out of the box -- if I play a dolby-digital encoded dvd through my mce box (generally ripped to hdd via dvd shrink with zero compression), my sony strda5000es receiver will automatically recognize the incoming signal as being dolby digital/ac3 encoded and will decode the audio for proper playback.  My understanding is that any resampling performed to the dolby digital/ac3 encoded bitstream will prevent it from being recognized/decoded by an external receiver.  Surprisingly (or not surprisingly given its state), while my old zoltrix was passing its signal via digital out, the sony receiver would NOT recognize/decode a dolby digital/ac3 encoded audio source and would always play this source back in stereo. 

Conversely, out of the box, the Chaintech resamples 44.1k sources to 48k.  I believe this is due to the lack of AISO support for the Chaintech out of the box.  Many articles detail how to flash the bios of the the Chaintech so that it's recognized by the computer as another card that does interface with aiso drivers, and many folks have successfully used the chaintech as modified to play dolby digital/ac3 encoded files recorded at 44.1k with this card (thus confirming that it IS bit-perfect at 48k).  However, reports indicate that the bios flash disables the card's analog outputs.  Since I will soon be transferring this a/v pc to a new location/use that will need the chaintech's analog outs (also turns out that the card has a standalone d>a converter for channels 6-7 that smokes the card's main d>a converter and can be used as the card's main output for stereo playback), I'm hesitant to perform this mod just yet, but will do so when I build my second a/v pc and buy another chaintech.

Finally, the cheapest online retailer I found for the chaintech is www.zipzoomfly.com, which sold it for under $25, shipped.

I don't have the links for the chaintech bios flash sites on my pc here at work, but, if there's interest, am happy to provide once I get home this evening.