USB or card interface?

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christos

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Does anyone know what are the disadvantages of having a USB based sound card?

I was thinking to partition my 240 gig drives in to 2 seperate operating systems 1 to leave for the kids to play their games and so on and one to have ONLY for recording....

This way you can disable all unnesasary devices drivers and shit that you dont need and only run the music software and drivers that you need to record and play back and have a USB audio card connected for recording........


Any sugestions?

Are USB based audio cards as good as the normal cards?

This setup will be like having on pc for MUSIC and one for everything else.......
 
A unit like that would be fine for a poke around the traps....
 
MiXit-G said:
A unit like that would be fine for a poke around the traps....

Are there any disadvantages using USB?
Do you loose quility in recording?
 
i have no idea really....

but it just seems like the cards will automattically be better (whether it's speed wise, quality wise, input wise...etc)..

i dont know though. haha!
 
I know USB has slow transfer rates compared to PCI but i'm not sure that this would be a problem having only a couple inputs.

Im sure it will be fine for recording as long as you dont need advanced features and if you dont know what they are then this unit is probly a good entry level for you christo.

Talk to your dealer!
 
MiXit-G said:
I know USB has slow transfer rates compared to PCI but i'm not sure that this would be a problem having only a couple inputs.

Im sure it will be fine for recording as long as you dont need advanced features and if you dont know what they are then this unit is probly a good entry level for you christo.

Talk to your dealer!

lot of the "dealers" dont know what they are talking about
people on this board i feel are more experienced when it comes to advise
 
If you do a search on this and other forums, you will find many people have had problems trying to get usb soundcards to work in their setups. I am sure people can get them to work but unless you have no choice why take the risk. Go with a pci soundcard.
 
alfalfa said:
If you do a search on this and other forums, you will find many people have had problems trying to get usb soundcards to work in their setups. I am sure people can get them to work but unless you have no choice why take the risk. Go with a pci soundcard.

My ideal goal is to create a partition on my drive that has its own operating system ONLY for music NOTHING else..
if that can be achieved with 2 pci cards one for each operating system thats good

On the other hand if having 2 cards might create conflict i thought
by having a USB sound on the music partiton that can be removed will be ideal. It would be like having 2 computers for seperate jobs.
 
Just disable the relevant soundcard in the control panel/system. The dual boot setup is a good idea and what i use too.

You might be able to run them both together though I wouldnt take the risk if you dont need to (esp if one of them is a creative card - soundblaster drivers install loads of crap into the registry).

I tend to avoid any kind of usb equipment. I am overly paranoid after reading of people even having conflicts with usb mice and keyboards and their soundcards when recording. I even disable the usb controllers (and serial ports) on my music partition but have them active for the regular pc partition as I need them for a usb network dongle (my mia has a conflict with my d-link pci network card so I had to use the usb one I had spare).

How come you have two soundcards? I thought you got the 6fire which can handle recording and gaming duties
 
alfalfa said:
Just disable the relevant soundcard in the control panel/system. The dual boot setup is a good idea and what i use too.

You might be able to run them both together though I wouldnt take the risk if you dont need to (esp if one of them is a creative card - soundblaster drivers install loads of crap into the registry).

I tend to avoid any kind of usb equipment. I am overly paranoid after reading of people even having conflicts with usb mice and keyboards and their soundcards when recording. I even disable the usb controllers (and serial ports) on my music partition but have them active for the regular pc partition as I need them for a usb network dongle (my mia has a conflict with my d-link pci network card so I had to use the usb one I had spare).

How come you have two soundcards? I thought you got the 6fire which can handle recording and gaming duties


The 6fire is due to come to the store on wednesday, i havent got a sounblaster card my old one is an audio card made by vortex but it only records up to 18 bit and wont run on xp.

So i will need 2 cards on the new system one for the kids and one for the music partition. The guy at the music store sugested i get 1 card for games and one ONLY for recording....He gave me this idea and thinking about it it might make sense to have a usb one that can be removed but if they are no good
im back on the drawring board HA HA HA
 
I'm one of those guys who had problems with USB soundcards. If you do a search you can probably find my posts about it. I think I explained my problem pretty much in my posts. IRQ sharing gives cracks and pops on a laptop... I finally ended up getting a USB2.0 card which cured my problems but I really wish I had never bought the USB soundcard. FIREWIRE just would have been a much better investment...

A USB soundcard might be cool for games and stereo in/out audio but if it's studio type work then the 2 in/outs and limited bandwidth might catch up to you when you want to up your setup.

Good luck...
 
Hey LAZI i cant help but notice you're avatar..i know he's beating a drum but it looks kinda like he's beating somthin else... hehehe
 
Get another PC and share the monitor.
2 soundcards/audio devices is asking for headaches.

I would recommend a PCI souncard over a USB anyday.
 
MiXit-G said:
Get another PC and share the monitor.
2 soundcards/audio devices is asking for headaches.

I would recommend a PCI souncard over a USB anyday.

I just spend close to 4 grand on the new pc
i still have the old one pentium 3 800 Mgh 512 mem 2x20 gig
but the point was to UPDATE not to stick with the old
 
The pentuim would be a great machine for music!!! some of us dont even have that.

Like i said you could use the same monitor and use the pentuim machine ONLY for music this would invariably increase your reliability, just tell the kids not to switch that on or your grounded ..or something.
 
MiXit-G said:
The pentuim would be a great machine for music!!! some of us dont even have that.

Like i said you could use the same monitor and use the pentuim machine ONLY for music this would invariably increase your reliability, just tell the kids not to switch that on or your grounded ..or something.

Looks like that is the best way to go
1 monitor 2 pc's seems cleaner as the music pc wont have NOTHING on it apart from recording software........
 
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