Inexpensive external soundcard - and my tips on setting it up

[BrianR]

I ordered an external Creative Sound Blaster MP3+ USB soundcard from www.compuvest.com. It's under $20 and was NEW. I never dealt with them before but I had no trouble with the order and it arrived quickly. Shipping was almost $10 but that seems like a low total price based on what else I could find on the net. I have no relationship to them - check them out if you like, ignore if you don't!

After getting it I have these tips to make it easier to get REW up and running:

- don't install any drivers or other software from the CD. Just plug it in if you have Windows XP, let it be recognized, then reboot.

- Go in to REW Settings and on the SOUNDCARD tab and change the "OUTPUT DEVICE and OUTPUT" and "INPUT DEVICE and INPUT" settings in the drop down boxes to be the soundcard (they are DEFAULT DEVICE until you change them). I was having trouble with a Low Input reading until I did this. Once I did this, the REW sound controls like Input Volume and Sweep Level worked (they had previously been grey'ed out).

- Maybe people have a more difficult setup than mine but there seems to be a lot of confusion about physical wiring connections. It's just an RCA wire from the Radio Shack Meter to the soundcard Right IN and then the soundcard Right OUT to the left or right IN on your receiver via another RCA wire. I suppose a BFD would complicate things but I don't have that so it was pretty straightforward.

Anyway - I thought I'd share my comments in case they help some other newbie out there. It's daunting getting this going but once you do it becomes very easy to take measurements and you'll find yourself trying all kinds of stuff to see how it affects the graphs. Fun!