M-Audio Audiophile USB Support...
Reply #20 – 2006-10-25 21:43:10
I think that was needlessly argumentative. Nothing Andy said deserved that kind of flame. You're right. I've only been told that that me calling VAC a virtual audio card was silly .Virtual cable vs card is just semantics. (Edit: Both of you need to let this go.) Correct. That's all it is about: semantics. And I stand semantically correct.And PCI vs USB, in the general case and for the average home user, Andy is clearly right. Unless you need USB for some reason, PCI is the way to go. This thread is an example, other problems might be windows games, os support, latency problems, and miscellaneous weirdness from programs that expect the capabilities that normal PCI soundcards have. A USB sound device should only be for laptops, needing portability, or total lack of pci slots -- some of the new pci-e mobos have distressingly few. The only other thing I can think of is a computer with such bad noise problems that only an external device is free of hum, and in that case I would look to find and replace whatever component is causing the noise: it's probably broken. (I have no opinion of firewire soundcards, having never worked with one.) As for having to provide ABX tests, he's making usability claims, not audio ones. I don't there's any way to ABX usability. If there was a lot of computer software would be a lot better! I said and/or ABX. He didn't explaind in which terms a PCI card would be preferable, so that could be either for technical and usabilty reasons or for acoustical quality reasons. In either case he (and you) should give positive evidence of the assertions. That would be ABX in case of acoustical reasons. Sergio