Waveterminal 192L and MI/ODI/O digital audio cards

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The Waveterminal 192L is one of three PCI Waveterminal cards designed for musicians wanting to move beyond 16-bit/44.1kHz recording. It supports 24-bit/192kHz digital audio playback (24-bit 96kHz recording) and features a stereo analogue In, a mono Mic In complete with +12V preamp, six Outs in the form of three stereo pairs, and a digital optical Out.

Installation is straightforward although Windows' New Hardware Wizard struts its stuff for every port on the card which seems a little excessive. It also installs the MIDI drivers by default although you need the optional MI/ODI/O card in order to use MIDI. In use with Cubase, for example, the MIDI drivers took over the system and wouldn't allow the existing MIDI port to be used! The solution was to disable the Waveterminal MIDI driver in the Device Manager and then reboot.

Console control

A software Console is installed during installation and appears as an icon in the system tray. From here you control most of the card's functions. You can set the sample rate or let the card set the rate automatically according the audio file's sample rate. There are switches for the digital connections although some of these require the MI/ODI/O add-on.

One of the analogue Ins is for a Mic but you cannot use this and the other analogue In at the same time. A switch on the Console makes the choice. When using a Mic you can select phantom powering and adjust the input level. This allows you to use both condenser and dynamic Mics.

On the right are faders for adjusting output levels and a useful feature here is the ability to control them with the mouse wheel.

You can also set the latency although it's in samples rather than milliseconds. The actual latency you'll achieve will vary according to the application and your computer system. However, the 192L supports hardware monitoring which should avoid many common monitoring problems. In monitor mode, output 5/6 becomes a headphone output.

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