Analog /Digital converters

[Salmon Dave]

Well here is another dumb but ever so important question...Has anyone used SAW with an M Audio
Plus UB 2. Trying to save a few bucks... and the units that were recommended to me were expensive....
And if, as I suspect....it is woefully inadequate....are there any recommends........or requirements that I should use as a benchmark.....
TIA .I really appreciate your help.

Salmon Dave

[Grekim]

I'd say if you can borrow a variety to compare that would be best. Also check out Lynn Fuston's converter comparison CD:
http://www.3daudioinc.com/catalog/product_info.php/products_id/31?osCsid=19141e3cdf0d6fc14df31df3d4030e79

Are you recording for yourself or running a business? And what are you recording?

[Cary B. Cornett]

Well here is another dumb but ever so important question...Has anyone used SAW with an M Audio
Plus UB 2. Trying to save a few bucks... and the units that were recommended to me were expensive....
And if, as I suspect....it is woefully inadequate....are there any recommends........or requirements that I should use as a benchmark.....
TIA .I really appreciate your help.

Salmon Dave The most difficult issue with using less-expensive sound hardware is the latency (time delay) that it imposes. If you ever want to use the SAW/SAC mixer for input monitoring, this becomes really important. There is hardware out there with fairly reasonable sound quality at a relatively modest price that unfortunately does not have good drivers that allow low-latency operation. IIRC, several people on this forum found that out the hard way.

[Salmon Dave]

Home recording songs to produce a CD.....semi pro....
I have some expectations.....Hope springs...
Toshiba laptop....4gb ram .....alas no fire wire...USB2
any suggestions for a converter with 4 imputs.....hopefully..

TIA

Dave

[DominicPerry]

Dave, sorry, you're not really in luck with USB audio interfaces. Most of them are terrible.
My recommendations are.
1. M-Audio Transit. Cheap and small. Drivers are reliable (in my experience) but latency is huge and all connectors are on 3.5mm stereo jacks. Maximum 16bit 48 KHz stereo in and stereo out. You can get higher bit rates but only if you restrict yourself to in only or out only. Supports digital in and out (on Toslink optical) and will also power headphones (a bit weak) on the output. Had one but it broke after a while; not complaining though.

2. Sound Devices USB Pre. Expensive. Solid. Goodish drivers, but rarely updated. Latency still not great without massive CPU load but has monitor circuit (see below). Excellent sound quality. Includes 2 Mic Pres, DI inputs, tape inputs, line inputs, good loud headphone out with true analogue zero latency monitoring and mix from PC plus a (-10) unbalanced output without the zero latency monitoring. Limited to 2 ch in 2 ch out with some very weird limitations of 16bit (analogue) or 20bit (S/PDIF) on the outputs. The host app sends 24 bit signals and the interface chops the least significant bits off. Strange. All the inputs are 24bit conversion. I have one, it's good.

3. Fireface UC. Even more expensive. Don't have one and haven't tried one so my comments are based on my experience of other RME interfaces. All RME drivers are good. Regularly updated, low latency, reliable. UC includes 2 mic pres. Uses USB2.0 (unlike the others above) and so will support multiple channels - has an ADAT in/out for expansion with an ADA8000 or similar.
Irritating control of the mic pres and output volume (all on one knob, like the Fireface400, which I did have one of) - not insurmountable, just annoying. Externally powered, rather from the USB bus (like the other two). Requires a decent CPU and the right chipset to get decent low latency performance. Headphone output (which will be a little weak if it's the same as the Digiface/Fireface400) can get a digital 'zero-latency' mix using TotalMix - bit fiddly compared with the SoundDevices approach, but more versatile.

Hope this helps.

I'm sure you've seen the comments in the other recent threads about Firewire/USB/PCI preferences.

Dominic