On Wed, 27 Feb 2019 at 19:58, Ralf Mardorf <silver.bullet@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Wed, 27 Feb 2019 19:07:51 +0000, Neven Sajko wrote: > >> Prosumer, as well as professional audio interfaces work very good > >> using the class compliance Linux USB driver. I own a prosumer audio > >> interface with 18 input and 20 output channels and there are no > >> issues using all of them and moreover, the prosumer USB device works > >> way better, than my professional PCIe audio interface. > > > >Hmmm, one advantage of PCIe is that it provides 3.3 V which does not > >have to be divided for supplying the microphone with it. Also PCIe > >causes less latency, but that is not really important for my use case. > > > >But I do not really see why would USB be a bad choice... > > If you are using a single audio interface for recording and playback all > your digital (ADAT, S/PDIF, AES/EBU) and analog equipment, you only need > to handle a single audio interface via Linux or any other OS. This audio > interface needs to sync (at best via word clock) to connected digital > gear, too, but for the OS it's just one interface. While it's possible > to use more than just one audio interface and it's also possible to > sync several interfaces, it's an annoyance to use more than just one > audio interface. You would end up making several synced audio interfaces > a single virtual audio interface or use some resampling solution, if > sync via hardware shouldn't be provided. In short, if you should use 4 > USB microphones, you would have to handle 4 audio interfaces, instead of > one. Without a workaround you won't be able to use those for 4 audio > interfaces for example with jackd. Workarounds steal time that could be > better used. Thank you for the insight! Summa summarum: if the user needs to use more than one microphone device (for recording separate sound sources), USB is a bad choice for the microphone compared to ADAT, S/PDIF, or AES/EBU. But in my case just the one microphone array is all that will run at the same time, and I want it connected directly to my PC, so USB or PCIe seem like the most natural interfaces. Regards, Nsajko
