What's the weakest link in our recording chain?

[Beck]

Over the last two weeks I found out first hand the difference between a cold and the flu. I’m still among the living somehow, but my social network interactions have been minimal. So, where were we?

we have an extraordinary claim which requires extraordinary proofs. So far, none has been forthcoming.

Extraordinary to whom? My answer to the OP was IMO pointing out the rather ordinary and the obvious! Surely the bar hasn’t fallen so low that so few people know the perils of USB. It has not fallen so low outside of the product-oriented home market. The USB (USB 2.0) standard was not built with real-time audio recording in mind and most motherboard manufacturers DO NOT address the interference issues. It’s not just a few problem motherboards. It is the USB architecture.

Computer manufacturers don’t have to address the issues to comply with USB 2.0 requirements, so USB audio device designers knowingly work within limitations. Are manufacturers going to tell you there are issues and limitations? No, of course not! You get breathless sales pitches from manufacturers same as you get from TV preachers. So mostly what you have steering the home market are marketing departments and the users who believe in them. And that goes for recording mags as well, which are product oriented. Anyone who in anyway benefits from sales of new product is going to shriek at the mention of problems with what they sell. At best they just ignore the issue. If you want to see frank discussion of USB and other technology issues you may have to learn Hindi and surf Indian tech sites.

There’s no question that USB has become very prolific, but that doesn’t tell us anything but that standards continue to plunge. Ubiquity does not equal superiority. If none of us understood that there would be no analog forum … or at least much less reason for it.

Among the extraordinary things I see are the claims from manufacturers and vendors over the last several years that USB is ideal for recording. Show me even a 10-year-old buss mastering 32-bit PCI audio card with external A/D interface and I’ll show you a better option for DAW than USB.

Another member voiced doubt that all these big companies would invest in an inferior technology, but that’s not what they’ve invested in. They’ve invested in the gullibility of their customer base… and in that they’ve invested wisely from a purely business perspective. From a technological perspective they’re not doing people any favors. Every year the tools offered to the home musician/recordist get more toy-like. USB for DAW is bad enough, but USB guitar plugs and mics… you’ve got to be kidding me! Yet there they are indeed everywhere… but not in my studio.

Do yourself a favor and get a real DAW interface… either buss mastering CardBuss for laptop or PCI/PCI-e for personal computer. If your computer doesn’t have these interconnects you shouldn’t be using it for recording. Not every computer is appropriate for DAW use. Many people erroneously follow the lead of the gaming community when measuring computer performance. This is a very common mistake among recording noobs. This is not as easy as it looks… not as easy as the people trying to sell something make it out to be.

There’s always going to be the self-proclaimed watchdog chiming in for the status quo. I’m used to that. My poor opinion of USB is not so much due to my 30+ years as recording engineer as it is my 14 years as a computer technician… modifying motherboards at the component level like I do any other piece of equipment… making them perform better where I can, but also understanding cold hard limitations that can’t be remedied by anyone. In the latter case I don’t waste my time, but rather use something else.

 

[Bobbsy]

USB leak into the analogue side? When? Where? Never heard of it. USB is just a standardised connection format. If there's going to be interference between the analogue and digital sides of an interface, it's much more likely to be in the chipset doing the A to D and D to A conversions (though I have to say, I've never heard of such a thing either. By the time the digital signal gets to the USB side of things, there's no analogue floating around anyway. So long as the amount of data transfer required fits within the USB spec, there's no "lie" or "limitation" that I've ever encountered.

Similarly, depending on the mixing desks you have, there's no automatic sonic limitation because they were designed for live use. Any restrictions are more likely operational since live work requires different routing and facilities than studio work. That said, a cheap and nasty live desk is just as bad as a cheap and nasty recording desk.

The thing that jumps out at me is the Behringer Ultragain and the selection of microphones.

 

[Beck]

USB leak into the analogue side? When? Where? Never heard of it. USB is just a standardised connection format. If there's going to be interference between the analogue and digital sides of an interface, it's much more likely to be in the chipset doing the A to D and D to A conversions (though I have to say, I've never heard of such a thing either. By the time the digital signal gets to the USB side of things, there's no analogue floating around anyway. So long as the amount of data transfer required fits within the USB spec, there's no "lie" or "limitation" that I've ever encountered.

Similarly, depending on the mixing desks you have, there's no automatic sonic limitation because they were designed for live use. Any restrictions are more likely operational since live work requires different routing and facilities than studio work. That said, a cheap and nasty live desk is just as bad as a cheap and nasty recording desk.

The thing that jumps out at me is the Behringer Ultragain and the selection of microphones.

Yep, you're probably right about the Behringer. The mics are fine, even if they just had the standard Shure mics, which have been used successfully on countless albums we know and love since I can remember. I’ve got got some great mics, but if I only had SM57’s and 58’s I wouldn’t be limited to my mind

As for my input, I don’t know what else to tell you Bobbsy, except to say if there’s a lottery in your part of OZ you should definitely play it because you’re the luckiest person alive!

In all seriousness I think audio standards have slipped so far down that the perception of what is audio excellence has changed so we have a flawed standard. We have to go back many years to a better industry standard, which I do when I evaluate audio on the recording side and the consumer end medium side. Both have sufferd.

The OP’s weakest links of what was listed that stand out to me immediately are the USB interface and potentially (as I said) the sound reinforcement consoles, which he said were a bit noisy. That was my clue that as often is the case live desks aren’t built with low enough noise figures for recording because in a live situation that doesn’t matter as much as it does in a studio. That’s my final answer!

You’re free to offer different advice. Everyone can completely disregard my input and I’ll just continue to pursue sonic excellence all by myself… it’s ok… really! I don’t mind and I'm used to that.

 

[fgonza2]

USB is the transport layer of the data. the only problem that it can introduce is latency which is in the order of 100s of microseconds for USB2 and 10s of microseconds for USB3.

There are strict guidelines defined by the USB spec for vendors to use the interface and guarantee 100% data integrity. If the manufacturer of the USB device doesn't follow that properly (which happens often) you start to have problems, that will mean digital noise and high error rates due to the poor implementation on top of that you can add all the noise that already comes in after the AD conversion. But the issue is not the USB spec, it is the poor usage/implementation of it by some devices. Firewire, PCIe and Thunderbolt have lower latencies and higher bandwidth. With USB2 you still have enough bandwidth to cover multichannel audio interfaces.

You will find all kinds of devices that use USB, some better than others, but in the end is how well the design is based on the understanding of the USB spec.

 

[Bobbsy]

If there are sonic problems in some USB devices, it's not to do with the USB part of the chain. As fgonza2 says, USB is just the transport layer for the data. It makes no difference to the audio quality whatsoever.

Yes, there certainly ARE differences in quality between various Audio Interfaces and the OP's M Audio is, at best, mid-range in terms of quality. However, that has to do with the quality of the mic pre amps and the A to D circuitry. The USB interface makes no difference whatsoever--basically it's a bit of wire carrying a stream of ones and zeroes. It makes no more difference to the sound quality than the XLR cable linking your mic to your pre amp. Actually, it makes less difference than the XLR cable could potentially do since there can be differences in capacitance and reflections in analogue cables.

By all means pursue sonic excellence and I'll join you on the journey. The first step is to persuade people to shun the use of MP3 compression. However, if you claim that the use of USB somehow results in a different audio quality than, say, Firewire, I'm afraid I'm going to have to say @no way".

 

[jpmorris]

USB leak into the analogue side? When? Where?

Here, 2005-2008 until I went optical and made sure there was no electrical link to the PC.

Never heard of it. USB is just a standardised connection format. If there's going to be interference between the analogue and digital sides of an interface, it's much more likely to be in the chipset doing the A to D and D to A conversions (though I have to say, I've never heard of such a thing either.

A lot is going to depend on how clean the bus is and how much effort has been put into smoothing it out anyway. But when the device itself is powered by +5 and ground lines that are contaminated with noise, what do you expect is going to happen...?

This is the sort of whistling I get on the UA25, even after recapping it:
http://tapewolf.wildernessguardians.com/audio/busnoise44.flac
...the UA5 would do that too but only when it had a USB connection (it is externally-powered - the UA25 has to be plugged into a computer to boot so it can't be tested on a mains->USB adaptor). At the time it was a lot worse - upgrading the motherboard and PSU on the computer may well have reduced the bus noise.

On one project I was using the UA25 to print the dialogue to tape. Halfway through it began whistling and I spent days rerecording the dialogue with another device to get rid of it. Fun times.

What is interesting was that it took about a year for each device to start doing this. I did wonder if some filtering capacitors inside the machines had degraded and failed, though recapping the UA25 hasn't made it less of a paperweight so far.

 

[Bobbsy]

But you certainly can't describe a fault with the way a specific item of gear implements USB as a generic fault with the USB standard. That's like saying that balanced analogue connections are a faulty concept because, with certain items of gear, they can carry an earth loop.

Look at the literally millions of USB audio devices around the world that give a perfectly clean connection between interface and computer. There's a virtual certainty that the audio for the last blockbuster movie you saw, the last hit CD you listened to and the last Broadway musical you watched all travelled through a USB connection at some point.