What's wrong with USB audio?

Here's my situation: I have an onboard C-Media 8378 sound chip in my computer. It's fair, but I would rather have something that wasn't sitting in the middle of a sea of noise and interference inside my computer case. I would be inclined to get a USB unit, but the scoop I have heard is that USB audio is not kosher. Instead, one is encouraged to get a PCI card or something like that. Problem is that my one PCI slot just happens to be taken up by my network card. Now, I suppose I could rip that out and do the network USB, but I want to weigh the pros and cons. So here's my question to anyone reading: Why isn't USB kosher for A/D conversion? What's with the fetish of PCI?

 

You're better off with the stupid C-Media chip OB rather than USB the audio off. Man...

There are drivers for the VIA and C-Media chipsets that have actually improved performance some, but umm.... there's better out there.

You only have one-two PCI slots? Eeek. Get yourself an ASUS, FIC or Abit board next time you go into something, and plan the next computer a little bit better. For next time though.....

Put the network on USB. Do you do long, hard downloads from websites or the newsgroups or something? If not, do that puppy through USB. It's fine. Your loss of bandwith will be negligible at best.

There are PCI choices that can run from $40 to $400 that will do better than the OB sound. The best chips and construction are built on PCI architecture.

 

And, assuming that you get a quality USB device with solid drivers, another problem with USB is that it's really easy to get screwed by latency. And USB has really low bandwidth to begin with (unlike, say, PCI) and doesn't have a way for the computer to reserve bandwidth (unlike, say, FireWire) to ensure that there's enough left for you to transfer audio.

I'd recommend a Mac if you're really adamant about wanting to use USB -- the USB drivers on OS X tend to be very good, and I believe there's already USB sound input support built-in. And you'll be set when FireWire/1394 solutions become available.

 

Reasons?

If latency and bandwith is problem, then what is your take on the following?


http://www.midiman.com/products/m-audio/USBaudio.php

 

USB 2.0 is the way to go---USB 1.1 sucks, since it's so bandwidth-choked. Noticed a huge difference here even with my cheap low-res webcam. Thank goodness I have 2.0 on the new motherboard. (And unfortunately, yours is probably 1.1 or older, unless it is a very recent motherboard.) I'm with Sckott--if you can get away with networking via USB, get a PCI bus sound card, since that's the fastest connection you can make to the rest of the system. Sounds like you have one of those Micro ATX motherboards with only a couple of PCI slots. Ironically you could buy a USB 2.0 upgrade card, but....ummm....that would take up your PCI slot.

USB 2.0 vs. Firewire? I'm not sure, but I thought someone said USB 2.0 was even faster than Firewire. Firewire can input full-motion digital audio, so it would be plenty fast for audio.

 

of course pretty soon, Firewire 2 comes out, which is faster than USB 2.0

its IMPOSSIBLE to keep up with these!!

 

Firewire 2 has been on the new Macs for a little while now and there are a number of devices out there that take advantage of it - like the Lacie Hard disks

All the best - Andrew

 

If it's any consolation, I've never used Firewire, and have little use for USB anyway. Only thing I really use often is my SmartMedia USB reader. If it's a drive, I prefer SCSI or IDE, and any other devices belong in the PCI slot IMHO. And still prefer parallel port for my printer, since the USB option never worked.

 

The next version of FireWire is indeed already out, and it is not only faster than the original FireWire (and USB 1.1, obviously), but is also faster than USB 2.0. Offcially, it has been dubbed FireWire 800, btw.