USB or Not? Any Consensus on Use?

M

Mark H.

New member
OK, I was initially excited to learn that products such as Sound Devices USBPre apparently do away with the need for a conventional sound card -- so, first off, did I understand this correctly?

It looks like you plug in your mics and line-level sources, and the USBPre performs the A/D conversion and sends the output to your computer via a USB cable. It even uses the tiny current available from the USB port to run the mic preamps.

So far so cool. However, I then read a detailed user's report in which the writer noted that USB sends data to the computer in some sort of 1kHz packet, and that his USBPre produced a distinctive "whine" at 1, 2, 3, and 4 kHz. Even after a software patch, while the USBPre no longer added the hum to the recorded sound, it still was present on playback.

By the end of the review, he was hoping the much cheaper Edirol UA-5 would be a suitable replacement for his USBPre.

Yet if the problem is with the USB interface (and not the outboard mic pres / mixer / A/D converters), it seems like this hum would either show up with any USB unit or have to be suppressed with some frequency-specific DSP equalization.

Anyone know about this? Anyone having any *good* results with an outboard USB unit rather than a regular sound card?

I KNOW NOTHING! So be kind when you respond -- getting sounds into a computer is still a major set of mysteries to me.

Many thanks,

Mark H.
 
USB worked for me

Hi,

I've used a Roland UA100 Audio Canvas hooked into the USB port of my computer for about 2 years without any problems. It acts as an external soundcard, and allows you to plug a guitar and/or a microphone right into the unit. Pretty simple setup too. Got a Roland Sound Canvas and Roland GI-10 (for midi guitar) both hooked into the UA100. Everything has worked without a glitch, but with Windows 98.

That's very important, because I've just upgraded to Windows XP and my equipment isn't compatible anymore. Gonna have to either go back to W98 or buy new equipment!

You can hear what the UA100 setup sounds like at http://mp3.com/leemuller , if you like.

Lee
 
I'm using a Tascam US-428 USB device and I couldn't be happier. Well, I wish it had phantom power but then I'd tend to rely more on it and wouldn't use real pres.

For a taste of what can be done with it head over to

http://chrisshaeffer.iuma.com

All of the tunes except "Daydreaming" were recording with the 428.

I can't speak for all USB devices, but I've had nothing but good experiences with this one. The only exception being I had to wait about 2 weeks for the XP driver when I upgraded. Then it worked fine.

Oh, it also doesn't work with n-track. I wish it did.

Having said that, I'd only recommend USB audio to someone that can't use internal cards- such as laptop users or folks with no expansion slots in their desktops. It works, but it doesn't compare- feature for price - to the internal stuff.

Chris
 
Thanks, Chris, for the great songs and for the recommendations.

The Ediron UA-5 kicks things up a notch by offering 24/96 and phantom power for $295 -- but are you saying that an Audiophile 2496 at $159 would do as well or better? Or do you have other suggestions for cards?

Thanks for your help.


Mark H.
 
The Audiophile 2496 will sund better than any USB-Based recording device, in my opinion.

Any dedicated 24 bit card will give you a cleaner, more detailed sound. I say this because I had a USB-Based recording unit, and my lead singer has a 2496 card.

If you have the room to do it, spend the 150.00 US & get the 2496...But that's my 2 cents.

VI
 
Too many issues right now with usb audio.

Better off going with a firewire or a pcmcia device (echo makes a good one, apparently).

I would imagine now that usb has been so drastically improved (usb version 2.0), that there will be a lot of good audio card options popping up all over the place. They now have about 40 X the bandwidth, I believe(? - something like that). Anyway, I would see if you could upgrade your current usb port to usb 2.0 and see what happens.

Right now, firewire seems to be the best option.
 
I'm not meaning to refute what you said, VI, though I wonder how many of us have good enough recording skills and equiptment to make use of the difference in sound quality between USB and PCI devices in the same price ranges? I sometimes wonder how significant the the fine lines we discuss really are. I wonder how much lack of skill and experimentation gets blamed on lack of gear. I don't know why I thought of that, but it seemed appropriate to bring it up.

I recorded on a crappy tascam cassette 4-track for years before I actually ran into its limits of quality- the rest of it was my lack of knowledge and skill, though I would never have admitted it at the time.

Hmm...I guess we are talking about the gear, though, not the skills.

Anywho, Mark, I can't say if the Audiophile will sound better or not. In general, however, the internal gear has been around a lot longer, works on more systems, and has more features for the price. USB audio is still in its early stages and either works well for you or causes all kinds of problems. For now its a gamble. Just because my us-428 works flawlessly on my system doesn't mean it will on yours.

That's why I tend to recommend it only for those who need mobile systems on a budget. Let those who need its features support the technology while it becomes more reliable and less expensive.

Chris
 
The first bass guitar I bought was a Court, Steinberg-style, sans neck. At age 15, I suppose it worked just fine for jamming in my basement.

One day, my mom of all people said she heard me practicing, and it sounded like I was "trying to do some things that my bass just wasn't letting me do".

I thought to myself: "What the hell does my mom know about basses? I'm not that good, and that's why I don't sound like John Entwistle when I try to do the hammer-ons and offs."

15 years and several guitars later, I recently upgraded to a Fender Precision light (from an Epiphone). The Fender P made me a better bass player almost instantly, because there were simply things I couldn't pull off with my previous model that the Precision lets me do.

What's my point? I don't know. But there's one somewhere.
 
And a darn good point it is, too. I suppose the real trick in sorting out which gear to get for home recording is to actually find the limits of both your skill and your gear.

So it makes sense to get the best gear you can afford- your skills will eventually grow into, and out of, it.

The difference in quality between a Fender P and a Cort, though, is immense. Same thing happened to me when I went from my Cort LP to a Gibson LP. :eek: Talk about a difference in quality!

So skills you learn on cheaper gear still carry over when you upgrade. What a fun metaphor we've got going here.

Though a bit off topic. Sorry about that. :rolleyes:

Chris
 
I'm not sure that sound quality has any business being in this particular discussion, because the converters are completely independent of the signal transport. I mean you could put a USB port on an Apogee converter and the converter would still be top rate.

I think it has more to do with DAW performance. As long as the bandwidth is there and it's smooth enough, there should be no problem. However, neither USB nor Firewire were designed with particular applications like audio in mind, so how devices will fare on certain systems is probably going to vary quite a bit, just as it varies with PCI systems.

From experience I can say that USB can cause at least minor problems. I have a USB mouse and keyboard and I get more dropouts during playback when I'm moving my USB mouse around than when I hook it up to the PS/2 port. Not so bad that it's not worth it on my system though.

I'm not sure what USB 1 can do in terms of bandwidth, but I think it's fairly low...like 10Mbps or something. However, Firewire is something like 400Mbps and USB 2.0 is like 480Mbps (yes, that's "megabits per second", not megabytes). So the bandwidth is technically there, how smooth it's going to be....hmmm....

Personally I used to think that USB was silly and that there's no reason to have USB devices...but then I started getting more and more and well, it's just so damn handy. Being a serial bus technology though, I'm not sure if it's the future. In fact it's roots go way back...nothing new here.

Slackmaster 2000
 
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