Any experience with USB Audio / Midi systems ??!!

R

Roodze

New member
Hi everybody,

I am looking for any feedback on USB Audio / Midi systems which are kind of external soundcards. In fact, they avoid you the hassles of computer / soundcard bugs - so you can really make some music...

I am especially interested in any opinion, comment or review of the Roland SC-D70 and The Yamaha UW500.

As those products are quiet new, it is very hard to get anything on them (there is not much on the Net).

Thank you very much and keep having fun with music !

Roodze
 
I have a Unitor-8 from e-Magic which I use with Logic Audio. One of the first things I did when I got it was measured MIDI accuracy and latency and I found it was considerably better using a COM port than USB. This may not be universally true, but considering how much more hardware and software is involved in sending a MIDI message over USB vs a COM port I wouldn't be surprised if it was.

So if just MIDI with no audio is slower and less accurate over USB I wouldn't put much faith in sending audio and MIDI over USB. If it were me I'd try to stick to more tried-and-true products and let others work the kinks out of audio over USB. USB has a lot of potential, but my limited experience says its just not there yet.
 
Thanks, AlChuck, cool article and it confirms my measurements, or somewhat closely anyway. I was getting worst case jitter of 2.45 mSec with serial and it jumped to 4.1 mSec with USB. The thing is, contrary to what the article might lead you to believe. it didn't matter whether I used AMT or not I still got worse timing with USB than serial. I think whether AMT or MTS has better timing comes down to whether manufacturers use isochornous timing to keep the MIDI unit in sync or not. If they don't, then the messages telling the MIDI box where the clock is will suffer from the same jitter the MIDI data will and timing may actually be worse. I suspect this is the case now with AMT as I saw no improvement in timing with it on or off. In any event just beware that all is not always as it seems.
 
Forget USB...

Thanks for answers,

It seems that USB is still a marketing idea...I changed my mind and I am going to buy an Audiophile with preamp and use VSTi for midi sounds...(I run AMD 1 Ghz - KT133)

Any opinion with this choice ?

I am hesitating because I heard of problems of the Audiophile with AMD chipsets.
 
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