Looking for good quality USB audio interface

[soundguy]

I couldnt help myself, I just bought one. If it sucks, off to ebay. One of my friends has a metric halo that I borrowed to transfer some stuff, I'll make some comparisons and see.

$200 to my door, if it doesnt sound terrible, is not so bad for non mission critical transfers IMO.

dave

 

[tk@halmi]

OK. So I got this Terratec Phase 24 thingy. The performance is pretty good. I get -107dB noise floor and 0.0012% THD with the loopback test in RMAA. Oddly, I get better measured performance at 96KHz sampling than at 192KHz sampling rate. Trading down a bit here from the the ESI Juli@ that cost less and has better performance. However, I am moving to the laptop setup so I need something to do measurements with.
The only problem I am having with the Phase 24 is occasional glitches in the signal, like drouputs. Once in a while they dork up measurements. I have no prior experience with Firewire interfaces. Can someone help tweak something to eliminate these droputs?

I have gone to the website and upgraded to the latest driver and firmware already with no improvement.

Thank You,
Tamas

 

[rodabod]

[quote author="tk@halmi"] Oddly, I get better measured performance at 96KHz sampling than at 192KHz sampling rate.

Can someone help tweak something to eliminate these droputs?
[/quote]

I think this is usually the case and is always experienced when increasing sample rate.

What operating system are you using? Windows XP?

Have you set it up correctly for audio? Is your computer cluttered with lots of different programs running in the background (startup)?

 

[Scenaria]

Hi,

I cant recommend presonus at this time.. ifyour curious as to why then check the brewery...their business model is horrible.

 

[tk@halmi]

[quote author="rodabod"]I think this is usually the case and is always experienced when increasing sample rate.[/quote]
I thought higher sampling rate would yield better performance. Going from 44k to 96k seems to be an improvement.

[quote author="rodabod"]What operating system are you using? Windows XP? [/quote]
Yes.

[quote author="rodabod"]Have you set it up correctly for audio?[/quote]
I haven't a clue how to do that. Where do I start?

[quote author="rodabod"]Is your computer cluttered with lots of different programs running in the background (startup)?[/quote]
It is a new Toshiba laptop and it has a few things already configured to show up on the right hand corner of the bottom toolbar. There are things like wireless network monitor, firewall, anti-virus protection, laptop power management and pointing device shmegema-jiggy tidbits.

I just need to run a single in and single out at 24bit/96KHz. This was a really simple thing on my old Win2000 PC and the ESI card. I am getting a sense that laptops are fussier. :sad:

Would a PCMCIA based solution like the EMU 1616 be more reliable out of the box?

Thanks,
Tamas
PS.: I am not good with computers.

 

[rodabod]

Oh bollocks..... just deleted all that I wrote accidentally.

I will write a summary then.

Increasing sample rate increases Nyquist rate - I think the increased bandwidth will relatively increase noise levels.

I am using a newish Toshiba laptop too: fine.

Programs in taskbar sound ok. Set power mode to full for battery and mains power - ie. don't allow it to ever switch off hard disks, etc. Maybe allow monitor to switch off. Not too sure about network / antivirus programs - probably ok if they don't prompt you though.

Look here:

http://www.musicxp.net/tuning_tips.php

I have used all of these settings - much better. I keep "system restore" enabled though, in case I mess everything up.

I'm not great with PCs either, but your setup sounds fine.

I would not bother getting a PCMCIA card - you will need to persevere with your setup - most things don't work perfectly out of the box.

Roddy

 

[mcs]

[quote author="tk@halmi"]It is a new Toshiba laptop and it has a few things already configured to show up on the right hand corner of the bottom toolbar. There are things like wireless network monitor, firewall, anti-virus protection, laptop power management and pointing device shmegema-jiggy tidbits.[/quote]
I would get rith of all the auto-start stuff. Including firewalls and anti-virus. You can do manual virus scans when you're NOT recording.

And don't enable any nice 3D screen savers either :grin:

Best regards,

Mikkel C. Simonsen

 

[AnalogPackrat]

Tamas,

I had (and periodically have again) the dropout problem that you describe. I'm using a Firepod on a desktop system running XP Home edition. You do need to disable all of the hardware parts that are not needed for recording. If these things interrupt the processor and cause the Firewire data stream to dry up you will get a dropout/glitch.

One way to do this is to set up two hardware profiles--one for normal laptop use and one for recording. In the recording one you will disable all the nonessential features like the network controller (wired and wireless), COM ports, etc. As a couple of others have stated, you should also set your virus scanner and other "auto" programs to manual startup so they won't interfere with time critical recording processes. Many programs also periodically check for updates (via the network) and will cause problems. You'll need to ferret out these things and set them so they do not automatically check for updates.

It can be really annoying, but every time you install new SW, get into the habit of going through the options/preferences and turning off all of the stuff that might interfere with recording. Here's a site that should help you get started:

http://www.musicxp.net/

Good luck,
Analog Packrat

 

[tk@halmi]

Much, much Thanks for the links and suggestions. I will create a separate login and profile for audio use, and follow the tuning tips. :grin:

Cheers,
Tamas

 

[Ghengis]

If your laptop is a centrino or one of the AMD processors, you should make sure it is running full throtle when doing your recording/playback to avoid glitches. This has been a bit of a pain for me on desktops and on laptops.

I installed Giga 3 on an AMD64 3200 and kept glitching. The processors throttle down the bus and sometimes the multiplier to conserve power/heat. When load at the throttled down speed exceeds 100% the FSB and multipler and voltage can get shifted to maximum. This is supposed to be instantaneous, but isn't of course. In audio processes this can give you a glitch.

If you are running a centrino, same applies. You can download this software which shows more whats going on: http://www.pbus-167.com/chc.htm plus also lets you change AC or DC processor stepping.

Hope that helps!
Ghengis

 

[tk@halmi]

This is working out great! Just turning the wireless network off seems to cure the glitch problem.
Now I have to finish my switchable 150 ohm input and 600 ohm output attenuators for measurements.

Cheers,
Tamas