[PlanetCCRMA] Experience with USB sound devices ?

[Ryan]

On Sat, 2003-11-01 at 06:34, Ekkehard Görlach wrote:
> Personally I am not shure (pretty new to all this) whether low latency
> is first priority for me as for most of the time I am either recording
> or playing.
> 
> Does anybody have experiences with USB audio interfaces ?  
> 
> Thanks,
> Ekkehard

Latency becomes a BIG issue if you're planning on doing real time signal
processing or software synthesis.  So if for example you want to perform
with a laptop, latency is a killer.

Jackd is the real-time audio server of choice.  Unfortunately and
fortunately jackd is in constant heavy development.  Most users (myself
included) find that USB audio interfaces are useless for any low latency
application with jackd currently.  The developers are well aware of this
but currently have bigger fish to fry so... For the time being I
(speaking as an owner of an emagic 2|6 usb audio interface) would say
don't go usb unless you're sure you won't need low latency (and maybe
not even jackd).  To reiterate USB performance isn't really on the radar
so maybe in a year or so things will be better.  Oh and firewire audio
support it really more of a question than an answer so rule that out
too. ;-)

Hope this helps,
-ry