Question about usb interfaces and analog to digital converters

T

twangbuck

New member
Ok, so I have an HP i5-2400 quad core pc on order and coming soon (3.1 GHz - up to 3.4 - w/4 GB of RAM installed and a 500 GB hard drive, Windows 7 64 bit). I have Cubase LE which I'm going to install once it arrives, and I have a Seagate 1TB external hard drive that I'm going to set up too.
My question is about interfaces. I'm a little confused about interfaces and analog to digital converters. I already have an older TC Electronic M-300 processor, which has a 24 bit analog to digital converter w/a sample rate of 44.1 KHz and quarter inch outputs or an SPDIF output.
Am I better off going with a USB interface? Something like the Focusrite Scarlett? If I'm better off going w/a USB interface, I really don't want to spend more than about $100, and I'm seeing Scarlett's online for that amount. I've heard good things about it and I know it's got a 96 KHz sample rate and 24 bit conversion. So am I correct in assuming that because it's a higher sample rate than my M300 that it's going to be a nice upgrade in terms of sound quality?
What about the analog to digital converter? Am I correct in assuming that the Scarlett is going to serve that function? After all, isn't that kind of the point of owning it? Or is that something that I'll need something else to handle? If so, then why buy the Scarlett?
Thanks for the help!
 
The TC M-300 is an effects processor and a pretty nice one by the way, but you need a DAW interface. As for using the Scarlett you get what you pay for. I would avoid USB audio interfaces altogether myself unless you're just screwing around for fun. What sort of internal slots does your PC have open? PCIe hopefully. Looks like you spent a lot for a decent computer to then skimp on the audio interface.

As to your question about bit depth and sampling rate the answer is no. You can have a better made converter and better quality device that only does 20-bit/48kHz and you can find plenty of 24/96 or 24/192 interfaces that are total crap. It depends on the product. If you have an available PCIe slot you have a lot more good options. That includes some older standard PCI interfaces that run circles around something like the Focusrite Scarlett. You just need a PCIe to PCI adaptor if you go that route. And you can get those devices pre-owned for pennies on the dollar on ebay.

I'd rather have the original Echo Layla 20-bit interface than anything USB. You'd be getting something that cost close to a grand when it was first released for maybe 200 bucks or less. A little more for the 24/96 version. You'll be happy you did if you're at all serious about recording. If you don't plan to move beyond the hobbyist stage to quality recording you can buy a cheap USB interface, but I don't think you'll be happy in the long run. I sure wouldn't if it were me. :)
 
I'm actually getting a refurb so the price wasn't that bad. The seller has an extremely good customer feedback rating with a decent return policy, so hopefully I won't get burned.
As far as the open slots, the specs say:
Number of Total Expansion Slots:
4
Number of PCI Slots:
1
Number of PCI Express x1 Slots:
2
Number of PCI Express x16 Slots:
1

I'm not exactly sure what all that means but I'll have a better idea once it arrives.
My only concern with going the PCI route is latency. I'm not a great techie by any means so I'm a little concerned about getting into a situation where I'm struggling trying to address latency problems. But I hear ya in terms of overall sound quality. I definitely am attracted to going the route of the highest sound quality I can, especially since the Echo's are so cheap now.
 
Beck and I have had this debate before--but if it was me, I wouldn't touch a PCI/PCIe interface with a barge pole any more. As a technology it's on the way out and you'll soon start having problems finding appropriate drivers for newer operating systems. Why do I say this? Do some Googling and see how many of the major computer makers have said they're getting out of conventional desk tops. If the number of desk tops out there falls, so will the people making cards to plug into them.

This is not a dislike for internal cards--I went through that phase for many years. It's just trying to stay a bit future proof.

Of course, the other thing that has happened is that decent quality A to D converters have become a lot cheaper over the years. You used to have to pay Layla money for the quality you can now get in 5 or 10 much cheaper USB ones.

Having said all that, I don't think the Focusrite is the interface for you even though it sounds fine. If you want to use your external effects box, you need an interface that allows you to feed your track(s) out to the TC unit, perform the effect then feed back into your DAW--and I don't know anything that'll do that for you at $100--or even close to $100. Now that you've added your comment about wanting the best quality, I'm afraid you don't just have to add to your budget--you have to do some multiplication!

...Unless you find one of Beck's deals on a second hand Layla and are happy to invest in gear with a limited useful life!
 
Bobbsy said:
Beck and I have had this debate before--but if it was me, I wouldn't touch a PCI/PCIe interface with a barge pole any more.
Click to expand...

+1

If you were a manufacturer would you make a product that can't be used by 70% of your customers? It's a brave new laptop and tablet world.
 
Just for a bit more background here my degree is in social psychology... human behavior and all that. So I have and I will continue to share observations about why people really make purchase decisions. Frankly the vast majority of the recording community today is on an endless upgrade crazy train that they can't get off... and that's by design by companies hocking this stuff. The truth is is most people are in a constant state of upgrade and acquiring gear because of peer pressure. This situation puts recordists in a state of perpetual transition... always feeling they must be on the crest of the next big thing. However, there is no end to the trends and worst of all most trends are not due to technology reasons. That is, you don't necessarily realize any significant benefits that made the upgrade worth the cost and trouble.

Enough experience will tell a wise engineer that many products are timeless and if they did the job with flying colors 5 or 10 years ago they can do the same great job today. So when someone speaks of looking to future trends when contemplating purchases I advise caution. Of course manufacturers want you to replace last years model with this years and then next years, but that's a profit motive in a business model not one based on getting to the business of establishing a stable studio environment, mastering your equipment and actually using it.

Avoid Motherboards without PCI or PCIe slots for audio/video. Not all motherboards are suitable for DAW use and will perform poorly in that role. A new computer is not necessarily a better one for studio use. If you're going to get realy fanatical about trying to stay one step ahead (whatever that is) don't go with USB either. Something new could come along in a year or two and make USB and firewire obsolete.

There's an abundance of current and older motherboards with buss mastering PCI interfacing. If you don't remember anything else, remember that buss mastering is a superior model for audio work. In addition converters simply have not changed much in performance and quality in the last decade. Brand new products from many reputable manufacturers are using the same converters in new products they were using 5 and even 10 years ago. Converter talk is a lot of marketing hype in many cases. So, if you put together a decent DAW that worked for you 5 years ago... keep it! I have quite a few PC's, old and new. One of the most stable and outstanding DAWs I've ever used is built around a Pentium III ! I'm holding onto that thing as long as I can, even if I have to recap it.

The trend to USB is one of the worst things to happen to recording. Stop listening to salesmen and following them like they're rock stars! Do your research. Surround yourself with many counselors who've been doing this stuff for at least a couple decades. Making music is not about constantly acquiring new gear! I know too many people have spent years buying gear and upgrading to something else before they even have a chance to become proficient with the old gear and they never do any recording. They just keep buying stuff (You know who you are).
 
Beck said:
Just for a bit more background here my degree is in social psychology... human behavior and all that. So I have and I will continue to share observations about why people really make purchase decisions. Frankly the vast majority of the recording community today is on an endless upgrade crazy train that they can't get off... and that's by design by companies hocking this stuff. The truth is is most people are in a constant state of upgrade and acquiring gear because of peer pressure. This situation puts recordists in a state of perpetual transition... always feeling they must be on the crest of the next big thing. However, there is no end to the trends and worst of all most trends are not due to technology reasons. That is, you don't necessarily realize any significant benefits that made the upgrade worth the cost and trouble.

Enough experience will tell a wise engineer that many products are timeless and if they did the job with flying colors 5 or 10 years ago they can do the same great job today. So when someone speaks of looking to future trends when contemplating purchases I advise caution. Of course manufacturers want you to replace last years model with this years and then next years, but that's a profit motive in a business model not one based on getting to the business of establishing a stable studio environment, mastering your equipment and actually using it.

Avoid Motherboards without PCI or PCIe slots for audio/video. Not all motherboards are suitable for DAW use and will perform poorly in that role. A new computer is not necessarily a better one for studio use. If you're going to get realy fanatical about trying to stay one step ahead (whatever that is) don't go with USB either. Something new could come along in a year or two and make USB and firewire obsolete.

There's an abundance of current and older motherboards with buss mastering PCI interfacing. If you don't remember anything else, remember that buss mastering is a superior model for audio work. In addition converters simply have not changed much in performance and quality in the last decade. Brand new products from many reputable manufacturers are using the same converters in new products they were using 5 and even 10 years ago. Converter talk is a lot of marketing hype in many cases. So, if you put together a decent DAW that worked for you 5 years ago... keep it! I have quite a few PC's, old and new. One of the most stable and outstanding DAWs I've ever used is built around a Pentium III ! I'm holding onto that thing as long as I can, even if I have to recap it.

The trend to USB is one of the worst things to happen to recording. Stop listening to salesmen and following them like they're rock stars! Do your research. Surround yourself with many counselors who've been doing this stuff for at least a couple decades. Making music is not about constantly acquiring new gear! I know too many people have spent years buying gear and upgrading to something else before they even have a chance to become proficient with the old gear and they never do any recording. They just keep buying stuff (You know who you are).
Click to expand...

USB2 & USB3 are plenty fast enough. You don't need PCI, it's just a data path - there's no difference between it and USB or FireWire in sound quality. The only variables are quality of preamps & converters and the number of channels required.

Now, you may be able to get high quality in an old PCI card for less money, but as technology marches on (as it ever has done and ever will), you will lose support for your old piece of kit. If, in 5 years time, you find you want to run the latest software, VSTs and whatnot, how are you going to do that on your now 10 year old PC running a Pentium 3 and Windows XP? If you want to stick in the analogue world, but use a DAW just to record, edit, etc., with no upgrade possibilities then fine, but if you want even any future proofing, go USB.
 
Just for the record about "fashion" upgrades...

-My control room monitors are 36 years old.

-My mixer is 9 years old (and replaced a 10 year old one for channel count reasons, not fashion).

-My mic collection ranges from 28 years old to 3 years old.

-My prime (multichannel) audio interface is also 9 years old (Firewire) and my back up 2 channel one is 5 years old (USB2)

Where we differ is that I made the move from desktop to laptop about 10 years ago. A large chunk of the work I do now is live sound for theatres and, frankly, lugging a tower, monitor, keyboard, mouse etc. around with me became pretty tiresome after a while. At the same time, since every seat the FOH sound area occupies costs money there was huge pressure to minimise my "footprint" which a laptop certainly helped to do.

With the change to laptop came the necessity to start using USB or Firewire devices.

Back in my desktop days, I used several different PCI interfaces (including the Layla) and they were excellent. However, I have to say that, with the exception of some "bottom feeder" brands, I certainly wouldn't want to claim I could hear any sonic difference between my older PCI interface and newer USB/Firewire ones. Where there ARE differences, I'd suggest that's more often down to the pre-amp section, not the A to D or data transmission format.

My only objection to your advice to go for PCI interfaces is that, from every press release I read, that seems to be leading the purchaser down a technical dead end. Desktops, alas, will become increasingly hard to buy over the next few years--and, as there are fewer machines in the user base, interface makers will stop making or supporting PCI gear.

....my view anyway.
 
My first interface was an ISIS PCI card with an eight-input breakout box. It came with Logic, and I spent many happy years with this combination from around the turn of the century. However, Apple bought Logic and support for PCs was withdrawn. I was stuck with using Logic 5 and ISIS on a Windows 98 machine. This was not too terrible a fate; I could have happily reserved a PC with 98 on it just to do audio. But I didn't. Instead I got a firewire interface and used it instead of ISIS on an XP machine, still using Logic (Logic 5 was the last version that was usable on a PC).

I eventually switched to Reaper. I'm sure that the Logic of today (unusable for me) has changed substantially from Logic 5, but the Reaper of today runs rings around Logic 5. It is more powerful, versatile and a lot easier to use, and my productivity has made significant leaps since the Logic days. So I am pleased I didn't tie myself down to an old, outdated system.

As to the quality of ISIS vs Presonus? I can't hear any appreciable difference. Maybe there isn't a difference, or maybe my ears aren't sophisticated enough to perceive a difference. Either way, I got creditable results from both.

However, the Reaper/Presonus combination suits me fine. I have two interfaces, and one sits in the rack I take to do live audio. This means I can take a laptop along to gigs and do live recording so easily.

The best hardware is of no help if the software that surrounds it traps you in a time warp.
 
Bobbsy said:
My only objection to your advice to go for PCI interfaces is that, from every press release I read, that seems to be leading the purchaser down a technical dead end. Desktops, alas, will become increasingly hard to buy over the next few years--and, as there are fewer machines in the user base, interface makers will stop making or supporting PCI gear.

....my view anyway.
Click to expand...

I don't want to get into the USB portion of the debate, though I don't have any deep love for USB, but it certainly is a "convenience" communications protocol, and from that perspective, has it's uses and it's popularity.
I use it to connect external hard drives and to transfer files with Flash drives, but I don't use it for any mics, audio converters, etc.

Anyway...while I do agree that PCI has faded away from current developments, I don't see why that's of particular concern if you already have a DAW system with PCI interfaces...?
As long is it's working, it's not going to be a technical dead end.
I've had the one PCI based DAW system for over 10 years...it still works the same as it did day one.
The second PCI-based system I configured recently will most likely run as long and more.
AFA is upgrades/drivers....well, I already have the drivers for the PCI interfaces, and they will still be working 10 years from now just like they have been the last 10 years.

The way you can shoot yourself in the foot is to endlessly upgrade your OS, which will "pull" everything else along, like it or not....which some people seem to do as fast as new ones are released.
I don't see a need or reason to do that for my DAW system, and so it will not hit a technical dead end.
I also don't see much in the way of new DAW hardware or app technology...it's basically leveled off, and you can find the same or similar functionality from DAW to DAW.
So....when "Windows 15" comes out, you don't need to get it unless you just happen to want "Windows 15"...etc. Your DAW will do the same job even it's still running on Win XP.

The trick is to have a DAW-only system....and then you can chase the endless upgrades with your kitchen/bedroom/office computers all you like.

The only way PCI-based DAWs will lose their value is when they completely die off and there's no more spare parts to be had....and eBay closes down. :)
That's the nice thing about desktop systems....you can keep them going and going, and it's easy to work under the hood and get parts.

Oh...and for those people who have PCI-based interfaces but who really want/need to get "Windows 15" when it comes out.....they have external boxes with PCI and PCIe slots, that let you connect them to most current computers using whatever current connectivity is needed. So you can keep them well beyond what computer manufacturers are choosing to do AFA new trends in desktop/laptop/Pad systems.

Again....have a purpose built DAW-only system, and do all your other computer stuff on a different system...and that DAW will not need a whole lot of constant/endless upgrading.
 
I agree in principle but, all too often it's the DAW computer which forces the drive for upgrades. Indeed, my "general" computer right now is happy being an old XP machine.

All too often I've been caught in some kind of Catch 22 situation. I need to add more recording channels than I have (dictated by the needs of a project), select a new interface then discover that new interface doesn't provide drivers for the old version of XP I'm still using. So I look at upgrading at Windows 7 and find that, with my old processor, things'll run as slow as molasses in January. I get all that sorted out then find that the company that wrote my DAW don't support the ten year old version on anything above XP.

Okay, I exaggerate a bit--but I keep finding little issues with drivers and software versions being incompatible.

Frankly, I genuinely avoid being right up to date with hardware and software--but also find it saves grief in the long run being a version or two behind the most modern. Letting things get TOO old will all too often return to bite you in the posterior!
 
miroslav said:
I've had the one PCI based DAW system for over 10 years...it still works the same as it did day one.
Click to expand...

I did use the one PCI-based DAW system for about ten years (ISIS & Logic, as I mentioned earlier), and it worked well on a fairly modest PC running Windows 98 for that period. I could still be running it now. But, I would be trapped into using a version of a DAW that is seriously limited compared to what I use now, as well as being bounded by the limitations of Win98.
 
My 10+ year old DAW runs WK2 as its OS, and I was running Samplitude 7 on it.

The "new" DAW system (which is built on a 6-year old tower running dual 2.8 XEON processors and 4 GB RAM) is running Win XP and I've now upgraded Samplitude to its ProX version...which is really Samplitude 12.
I could have easily installed ProX on my old DAW system, and the only reason I didn't was because of a few add-on plugs/apps that came out after W2K was over....so I had to move up to XP for them....but my second tower is still a PCI based system using the same type of converter hardware as the older system.

I've now added a pile of add-on apps/plugs, I have my DAW software as current as possible...and quite frankly, see little reason or need to do any more upgrades for the time being, and I will probably have this same DAW system 10 years down the road.....doing everything that a DAW needs to do and no different than whatever people will be using in 10 years and on whatever new OS and computer hardware is out.

My point is that DAW technology leveled off a few years ago...and most upgrades these days are tied to people simply wanting to upgrade their computers, hences forcing themselves to upgrade a lot of the hardware, drivers and peripherals that need to attach to the upgraded computer.
It will be awhile yet before cutting-edge audio software comes out that is NOT supported on Win XP....so I don't see any needed upgrade coming for a long time in my situation.
 
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