Emu have already taken the market by storm with their range of affordable, high-performance soundcards, and their new stereo PCI card offers impressive features and audio specifications at a budget price.
Joining the excellent 1212M, 1820 and 1820M in Emu's soundcard range, the new 0404 is also a PCI card, and features the same E-DSP chip capable of running up to 16 DSP effects simultaneously. The 0404 boasts stereo analogue inputs and outputs, plus both co-axial and optical S/PDIF digital input and output, and a MIDI input and output, for an amazingly low UK price of just £69.99. This time the analogue I/O is unbalanced, but the software bundle seems to be exactly the same as for the 1212M, consisting of Steinberg's Cubasis and Wavelab Lite, the Sound Guy's SFX Machine LT effects plug-in, and a trial version of Minnetonka's Discwelder Bronze DVD-Audio burning application, plus the same Patchmix DSP utility software as the rest of the range. Once again this product is currently for PC users only, and runs either on Windows 2000 or XP.
The Grand Tour
All the 0404's circuitry, including the Burr-Brown PCM1820 ADC and AKM AK4395 DAC chips, is on a single PCI card. Both converter chips are 192kHz-capable, but only 44.1, 48 and 96 kHz sample rates are supported here, although at this price I don't see this as much of a restriction. As on the other Emu soundcards, the mysterious Xcard In and Out connectors are present for rumoured multi-card support, as well as a Sync socket so you can attach the optional Sync daughterboard via an internal ribbon connector to add word clock in and out, SMPTE in and out, and MTC (MIDI timecode) out. I suspect these functions will be overkill for the majority of potential 0404 users, but it's a welcome upgrade option.
All I/O is on flying breakout cables, with the audio emerging from a nine-pin D-type connector to four quarter-inch unbalanced in-line jack sockets, and the digital I/O using a separate 15-pin D-type connector terminating in two in-line phono sockets for co-axial S/DPIF, a tiny in-line box with two Toslink optical sockets, and two in-line five-pin DIN MIDI sockets. As its 0404 nomenclature suggests, both S/PDIF inputs and outputs carry the same signal, so you can record and play back up to two mono analogue and two digital signals simultaneously.
Installation of the 0404 drivers and Patchmix DSP software went without a hitch, although for any existing Emu users who are wondering, you can't use the 0404 alongside a 1212M, 1820 or 1820M, since the drivers in each case look for their specific hardware and don't currently support multiple cards. However, although the 0404 Patchmix DSP software seems tweaked to only look for the 0404 card, it's functionally identical to the version supplied with Emu's other, more expensive cards, with exactly the same selection of 32-bit DSP effects that run at either 44.1 or 48 kHz (but are disabled at 96kHz), and once again there is no hidden sample-rate conversion going on behind the scenes.
Emu's 0404 has the same multi-channel DSP mixer and effects as its more expensive cousins.