USB Card for Laptop

  • Thread starter Thread starter moelar2
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moelar2

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Hello,

I just recently purchased the M-Audio Quattro mainly to be used for stereo mix down to my laptop. Though I haven't fiddled with it extensively, my first impressions are not that good. Someone else has referred me to the Emagic usb card that is suppose to be in the same price range, about $50 or so more.

Any thoughts?

thanx in advance.
 
I am using the Aardvark USB3 Direct Mix, which is inexpensive, simple and worth a look--however, it does not support MIDI. I have also gotten reasonable results by simply plugging a mixer into the line-in of my laptop's built in sound card. I use Guitar Tracks Pro.
 
You and I both bought the Quattro for a laptop, which means we both spent kind of a lot of dough on a 4x4 +midi interface that will hook up through a USB connection. The problem is, I've been hearing some disturbing things about using USB for digital recording. Apparently, we'd be better off getting an external audio/midi interface that connects up to a PCMCIA card (assuming you've got an open slot for this). You will spend more for this set up (I've seen $800 for a LAYLA 24 or MONA from Echo), but at least you wont have to buy separate mic amps.

I sure would appreciate some more discussion on this whole USB v. sound card issue. I really don't understand what is being compromised on the USB connection. Is the point that, if you buy a Quattro, and you actually try to record from 4 inputs at once, you will lose data at the connection? What if you buy a Duo from the same company and can only send signal from two inputs at once? Are you still likely to hit against this ceiling? It would be great if some technophile(s) could weigh in on this, since the number of USB devices on the market is increasing every day it seems.

Dave
 
Its pretty simple.

Bandwidth comparisin:

USB - 12Mbits/sec
FireWire - 400Mbits/sec
PCI - 25-100 Mbytes/sec and upwards

Note that PCI speeds are in megabytes per second - the other two megabits.

12Mbits/sec is barely enough bandwidth for 4 24-bit channels being recorded simultaneously. If you're playing tracks back at the same time, you might as well give up now!

Another little point to keep in mind - all that bandwidth is shared between ALL your USB devices (if you have more than one), so if you've got anything else connected via USB at the same time, you won't even get the 12Mbits/sec!!!

USB audio devices are too expensive and give poor performance. You are paying a premium for new technology which gives you no performance gain. Either get a PC-Card interface or don't bother with laptops.
 
You definately dont want USB for serious recording but if your only doing one or two tracks at a time you should be okay. You could monitor in mono while tracking or stick to 16bit to conserve bandwidth.

You can build a decent desktop CPU for about $700. In the long run it will be a lot easier than trying to use the work laptop.
 
I am a former owner of a the Audiosport Quattro.

It isn't an issue of whether or not USB is good or bad for audio. It's a matter of the Audiosport Quattro sucking.

It just plain sucks. Do a search on the web. Find one person who is satisfied with it. I love M-audio - I now own the Delta 1010LT and have had zero issues with it. I also own the DMP2 preamp and have been equally satisfied. The Quattro is a blemish to the M-audio name.
 
Very good to know. I'll bring it back today. I am committed to building this thing around my laptop, though, so I'm thinking about the MONA. Problems are (1) it's wicked expensive and (2) I am still going to need a midi interface (I'm pretty sure). Anyway, thanks to all for your responses on this.

Dave
 
Firewire allows flexibility too!. I have a laptop with celeron 800 and a slow spinning hard drive 4200rpm!!Bleh... It can barely handle recording recording 6-8 tracks but it's fairly stable for a few tracks (more when I hook it up to a firewire HD). I can use it on the run with my MOTU 828 and then bring it back to my desktop PC in the studio which I just recently outfitted with a firewire card. Then I can add many more tracks and process, etc.. Having a firewire HD for my audio data makes things very easy when going from laptop to desktop. I just unplug and plug in. Having only a laptop was frustrating for a while because of limited track numbers. A lot of laptops come with a 5400 rpm drive which should allow you more tracks than I could get on mine.
 
Firewire, MOTU -- these are like reasons # 8331A and B to chuck it and get a G4. At the moment, though, I am trying to make a go of it with a Sony Vaio.

I have no clue how fast my hard drive is spinning, but that's another thing I hadn't thought of. I'll have to look into this. Not that I really have any choice about what machine to use . . .

If anyone has any recommendations for an audio (or, better, audio/midi) break-out interface that connects to a PCMCIA, I'm going to start focusing my search on these things. Though the USB issue is still not resolved in my mind, since brzillion seems to say the bandwidth issue doesn't come into play until 4+ audio tracks simultaneously, which is right at the edge of what I (as a solo/bandless musician) am likely to need.
 
USB advances to watch

I would wait for maturity on USB recording. The Quattro is utilizing USB 1.0 which has notable limitations, all listed here in these posts. USB 2.0 offers higher bandwidth, not quite Firewire, but certainly enough for your recording needs. Wait a bit, the next Quattro is sure to be more reliable, due to USB 2.0 utilization.
 
you can get a PCMCIA card for your laptop with multiple firewire ports. I bought nice one from firewiredirect.com. You want to make sure you get one with a good chipset (TI and some others) You don't need a vaio or a mac.
 
I would say right now is about the very worst possible time to be in the market for a laptop audio interface.

Very soon, all laptops will come standard with usb 2.0. I can imagine a flood of manufacturers coing out with new 2.0-compatible interfaces. This would be a very good time for someone like yourself, because a lot of people will be selling their old ones as prices drop severely in an attempt to blow out the remaining stock.
 
laptops

This is a question for Jamie or anyone else who has a firewire/laptop setup. Do you actively record onto your external firewire drive? And if you do, does it handle as much as if it were an internal drive?
 
Slow down people!!!!

Firewire HD's by the nature of the Firewire interface are NOT faster than IDE Drives.

Firwire - 400Mbits/sec
IDE - 33 to 100 Mbytes/sec!!!

Notice IDE is in MEGABYTES not megabits.

1Mbit/sec is only equal to 125k/sec!!!!!!

IDE is still MUCH faster than Firewire - anybody who says otherwise doesn't have a clue!!!

Firewire and USB were replacements for the aging Serial and Parallel interfaces - nothing more.
 
brzilian and all

there are 8 bits in a byte. Firewire runs at 400 mbits per second, which then translates too 50 Mbytes per second (400 / 8 = 50). This falls well within the range that you specified for IDE (33 - 100). ( I even heard of newer firewire ports bragging 800 mbits per sec, which would be 100 Mbytes, not to sure about this yet though).

So yes, the 400 mbit firewire may be half as much (compared to 100 Mbyte IDE drives) in the amount of data it can transfer, but I was wondering if there were any weird latency issues with an external drive because it's hooked up to firewire.

Could some body tell me more about an external firewire drive setup? What should I expect?
 
SalJustSal said:
brzilian and all

there are 8 bits in a byte. Firewire runs at 400 mbits per second, which then translates too 50 Mbytes per second (400 / 8 = 50). This falls well within the range that you specified for IDE (33 - 100). ( I even heard of newer firewire ports bragging 800 mbits per sec, which would be 100 Mbytes, not to sure about this yet though).

So yes, the 400 mbit firewire may be half as much (compared to 100 Mbyte IDE drives) in the amount of data it can transfer, but I was wondering if there were any weird latency issues with an external drive because it's hooked up to firewire.

Could some body tell me more about an external firewire drive setup? What should I expect?
Click to expand...

Ummm, keep in mind the 400Mbit bandwidth is shared by all Firewire components so if you have another Firewire device connected in conjunction with a HD, you will not be getting the full bandwidth.
 
Just checking if there was a typing error. 8 mbits = a mega byte or a byte? If it is only a byte then I would think it is only 50 bytes, which is still lower than mega(100) or is it (1000) bytes.

Specs
 
specs,

8 bits = 1 byte

8 mbits = 8 Mbytes

the m/M stands for million, I believe

-Sal
 
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