Does a second PVR card required a second sound card??

[travelmore]

I've been happily using an ATI AIW7500 card with Snapstream BTV. I just bought a LeadTek PVR card, thinking that I could manually record shows with the LeadTek card when I want to record two shows at the same time. I'm able to record the video, but not the sound. I was thinking the MPEG2 file was created entirely from processing the cable signal, therefore the sound card would only be needed to playback sound, but not to record it.

Apparently I'm wrong, ' cuz I'm not getting any sound. Is adding a second sound card necessary? Will that solve my problem?

[Cayars]

You need to use the sound board for audio capture with a AIW board. However if you were using a PVR-250 type board with onboard encoder then the sound board is strictly for outgoing sound and isn't used for the "capture".

Carlo

[cmasters]

That is interesting. I wonder how Multi-Tuner will work in BTV in regards to software encoders. Sounds like you can only have one software encoder. I wonder if it would not be simpler and easier to support for them to limit multi-tuner to hardware encoders only.

We shall see.

[jkoon]

Well you could have multiple tuners and connect their audio to different inputs on your sound card. Like have one tuner use the aux input, and the 2nd tuner use the mic input, etc.

[travelmore]

I have the ATI card using the Line in of my sound card, and I have the LeadTek using the CD-in of the sound card - but it seems that I still cannot record two shows at the same time.

I can go out a buy a cheap sound card, but I'm curious to see if others have found a different way to resolve this problem.

[Brett]

Originally posted by travelmore
I can go out a buy a cheap sound card, but I'm curious to see if others have found a different way to resolve this problem.

Most people I know with multiple tuners use multiple hardware tuners. The fact is the software encoders are designed to eat up CPU so if you have two of the running together anyway you will not be satified with the performance, its going to drop every other frame.

-Brett

[Eric3a]

When 3.5 comes out I'll probably have a go at running 2 software encoders at the same time: Guess we'll find out the hard way that it's unlikely to produce good results.
Theoratically I need about 40% CPU when recording, so I could record another stream and still have CPU cycles left..?

I've been wondering about needing another sound card and was about to ask the question myself. I've been holding on to an old SoundBlaster for just that purpose.

Eric