Latency and the SB Extigy

D

drathbun

New member
I'm thinking of getting the Extigy to bypass the audio card on my notebook computer. I know, I know! There are drawbacks to a USB soundcard AND with the SB Extigy itself in terms of audio quality.

However, my two desktop computers are not accessible to me for private recording (between two teenagers and a spouse), and the notebook suits my needs for portability. I have also researched the M-Audio Duo and Quattro USB solutions and most of the comments are from people who have dumped the Duo because of connectivity problems with Windows XP and latency problems in simultaneous monitoring while recording.

Which brings me to my question - what is the Extigy's performance as far as latency goes? I know the Extigy connects well with Windows XP but it I am going to have audio lag, I'll look for another solution.

Any suggestions or comments are much appreciated.

Doug
 
I have been using an Extigy and an IBM Thinkpad for the last year. The issues you bring up do exist, but are not prevalent as some might have you think. Admitedly, however, proper configuration is even more essential in this setup than in a standalone DAW with a Delta.

Latency is not so bad. I never benchmarked it, but in the real world "seat of the pants" testing, I never had any problems. And in some cases I had singers singing to 20 pre-recorded tracks.

Make sure you have plenty of HD and RAM, defrag often, and take your time. The sound quality of the Extigy, I thought, was quite good. I know about the bandwidth issues of USB, but again in the real world, it just didn't rear it's head.

Good luck.

:cool: :D :p

-BM
 
The Extigy doesen't have ASIO-drivers or good WDM-drivers. Latency's gonna be high!
 
Thanks for both replies. It seems if you really need to record with an external sound card you are between and rock and a hard place at least as far as under $500 solutions are concerned.

All the horror stories here about the M-Audio Duo make me skiddish about that one. I've been looking at the Tascam stuff too.

The Tascam US-224 is probably more stuff than I need but the Tascam US-122 looks interesting. For $269 ($50 in a promotion this month) it has two XLR phantom powered mic inputs, two line level inputs (TRS) switchable to guitar level, 16 channels of MIDI I/O, ASIO and WDM drivers and adjustable direct monitoring.

Sounds too good to be true for $219!
 
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