Marian Marc 8 Midi

Marc 8 Midi is the worthy successor of the successful ARC88. When planning and developing this audio card, the main aim was to offer high quality with state-of-the-art audio technology at an especially attractive price. Only two years ago such kind of equipment, which is available on this small high-end card, was prohibitive.
Apart from the ability of recording and playing audio signals on several channels, Marc 8 Midi provides two integrated MIDI ports. With this you make each PC the heart of a professional home studio. Another bonus is the rather low latency in ASIO, GSIF and DirectSound.

Marc 8 Midi hardware is prepared for the ASIO-IN-HARDWARE feature. This can be used for direct access to the card memory using any ASIO recording software. This feature will be available fully functional with future driver updates.

Clock/Start/Stop Synchronization of All Cards with each other Using the Integrated Synchronization Bus

Different cards can be connected using an hardware-side synchronization bus with a flat cable. This way you can for instance couple a PRODIF Plus, a Marc 8 Midi and a MARC to a synchronous audio system. In this audio system you will not only have the same digital clock, but you can also run start/stop synchronization of all connected I/Os.

Zero Latency Monitoring

You can listen to any input signal on analog and digital outputs without delay. The Routing possibilities of the MARIAN Sound System Manager even allow switching of signal sources during a running playback operation.
Furthermore, there are two interesting functions available, which could be very useful for practical use:

Automatic Record Monitoring: Selected inputs are monitored automatically, if a recording of these channels is performed in the recording software.

Automatic Punch In Monitoring: It is a function which was so far only available in connection with the hard-disk recording program "Samplitude". The routed input is monitored automatically, if a Punch In recording of these channels is performed in the recording software.

Hardware Pitch

Using hardware pitch, applications are able to track audio signals at a given time code without delay and CPU load.

UltraSpeed Driver Design

The lavish development of the driver was worth the effort: MARIAN drivers distinguish themselves by high performance and lowest latency periods. The functionality of these drivers goes far beyond the MME Standard. This functionality is available to developers in form of a API documentation.

Features

• 4 Stereo Analog I/Os: Eight analog mono inputs and outputs.
• A/D and D/A converters of the well-known manufacturer AKM operate each at a maximum of 24 bit/96 kHz and ensure professional audio values in connection with a sound optimized hardware design.
• The signal-to-noise ratio amounts to approx. 96 dB. THD+N: 0.005%.
• frequency range: 20-20,000 Hz (at 96 kHz-40,000 Hz)
• 2 MIDI I/Os
• Analog Ports: Breakout cable with RCA jacks
• Sample Rates analog: 11.05 kHz-96 kHz

Multi-Card Operation and Drivers In a system upto 4 cards can be installed concurrently requiring only one installed driver. Together with the synchronization bus they contribute to the cards' perfect synchronization. The number of simultaneous recording channels depends on the power of the PC and is limited to 15-22 channels at 44.1 kHz.

Modular driver dialogs allow displaying and manipulating of numerous parameters, including accurate level meters, flexible monitoring and synchronization settings.

The cards has a highly developed multi-client driver architecture, which allows extremely low latencies (up to 2 ms) with ASIO, GSIF and DirectSound. Because of this it is especially tremendously suitable for time critical applications, such as using the Cubase VST SoftSynths.

System Requirements

PC

• Windows 95/98/ME, NT, 2000, XP
• A free PCI-Slot
• An unused IRQ (Interrupt)