On Wed, 27 Feb 2019 at 19:58, Ralf Mardorf
On Wed, 27 Feb 2019 19:07:51 +0000, Neven Sajko wrote:
Prosumer, as well as professional audio interfaces work very good using the class compliance Linux USB driver. I own a prosumer audio interface with 18 input and 20 output channels and there are no issues using all of them and moreover, the prosumer USB device works way better, than my professional PCIe audio interface.
Hmmm, one advantage of PCIe is that it provides 3.3 V which does not have to be divided for supplying the microphone with it. Also PCIe causes less latency, but that is not really important for my use case.
But I do not really see why would USB be a bad choice...
If you are using a single audio interface for recording and playback all your digital (ADAT, S/PDIF, AES/EBU) and analog equipment, you only need to handle a single audio interface via Linux or any other OS. This audio interface needs to sync (at best via word clock) to connected digital gear, too, but for the OS it's just one interface. While it's possible to use more than just one audio interface and it's also possible to sync several interfaces, it's an annoyance to use more than just one audio interface. You would end up making several synced audio interfaces a single virtual audio interface or use some resampling solution, if sync via hardware shouldn't be provided. In short, if you should use 4 USB microphones, you would have to handle 4 audio interfaces, instead of one. Without a workaround you won't be able to use those for 4 audio interfaces for example with jackd. Workarounds steal time that could be better used.
Thank you for the insight! Summa summarum: if the user needs to use more than one microphone device (for recording separate sound sources), USB is a bad choice for the microphone compared to ADAT, S/PDIF, or AES/EBU. But in my case just the one microphone array is all that will run at the same time, and I want it connected directly to my PC, so USB or PCIe seem like the most natural interfaces. Regards, Nsajko