Malcolm Baldridge wrote: >>So how about this one? - Creative Labs SoundBlaster MP3+ USB Audio unit >>Yeah, it's a cheapo, about 40 bucks at Fry's. >> >> > >Just my 1/2 cent. USB has no latency or bandwidth guarantees on any aspect >of its design. I would strongly suggest that you'll have much better >results with software/hardware integration and smooth-running performance if >you use a real PCI audio card instead of a USB device. > >All I hear are problems from people who own USB audio devices. > I have had great success with a Edirol UA-5 USB audio device. I have made multiple recordings over 3 hours long at 16bit/44.1KHz/2channels duplex using ALSA usb-audio, ALSA OSS emulation, and Audacity. Using ALSA/Jack/Ardour I have made recordings over 70 minutes long at 24bit/96KHz/2channels simplex. And all of this on a 366MHz PII laptop, appropriately tuned. I record to a second hard drive in the laptop. Originally that hard drive had a Reiser v.3 filesystem, but Reiser v.3 performed badly when the partition is over 90% full, so now I have ext3 in there. I've also had no problems with a Griffin iMic USB audio device on the same laptop, however the Griffin iMic has cheap analog circuitry. They sure named it right since it turns out to be quite microphonic (if I tap it during recording noise is injected). That said, I have found that USB audio just doesn't work well with some computers. It seems to be due to hardware differences, because problems remain even when I have the software setup identical to my laptop. wes
