USB Interfaces?

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JBird

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I would like to record to my laptop and I'm looking at a few of the USB Interfaces currently available (i.e., Tascam US-428) Does anyone have experience with these units or USB recording in general? Any differences when compared to PCI sound cards?
 
Search the archives a bit for this, I believe many questions have been answered. The jist of it is that usb doesn't have nearly as good bandwidth as pci therefore your recordings can't be at as high of a resolution. Usb 2.0 promises to be better than its predessesor but fire wire is the best method next to pci. So I would recomend looking into that, I am pretty sure there are some good firewire devices avliable.

-Angermeyer
 
Also check the TASCAM forum here at homerecording.com. Particularly US-424/428 users (I remember that Crosstudio has one) can be found there.
 
yup, i've got the tascam 424 and i dig it. i'm going to get some mic-pre's for it though, because it doesn't have phantom power, and i'm more in love with the USB capabilities connecting to the laptop than i am with the pre-amp capabilities.

i got mine after i heard the sound that fellow homerec'r Chris Shaeffer was getting from his.

on the day job i'm a software architect, and i've been doing some white-paper reading on the USB 2.0 architecture that INTEL has developed. my only hope is that Tascam/Frontier Design will have a way to upgrade the 428 to USB2.0

with the new architecture USB will be just as fast as firewire. the issue is really a matter of support. since USB is INTEL brains and most PCs run on INTEL you are in pretty good shape.

I still think IEEE394 (firewire) is a better architecture, but that's not the point.
 
ps. i bought the m-audio duo first... i sold it on ebay after buying the 428.
 
crosstudio said:
yup, i've got the tascam 424 and i dig it. i'm going to get some mic-pre's for it though, because it doesn't have phantom power, and i'm more in love with the USB capabilities connecting to the laptop than i am with the pre-amp capabilities.

i got mine after i heard the sound that fellow homerec'r Chris Shaeffer was getting from his.

on the day job i'm a software architect, and i've been doing some white-paper reading on the USB 2.0 architecture that INTEL has developed. my only hope is that Tascam/Frontier Design will have a way to upgrade the 428 to USB2.0

with the new architecture USB will be just as fast as firewire. the issue is really a matter of support. since USB is INTEL brains and most PCs run on INTEL you are in pretty good shape.

I still think IEEE394 (firewire) is a better architecture, but that's not the point.
Click to expand...

USB 2.0 is completely different hardware-wise, so there will never be a way to upgrade USB 1.0 devices to USB 2.0 standards with some kind of software update.

USB 2.0 on paper says it can reach speeds of 480Mbits/sec. In real life situations, depending on your hardware, that might actually be around 200-300Mbits/sec.

Firewire is still a better choice.
 
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