[arch-general] HDMI audio input - HDMI microphone

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Wed, 27 Feb 2019 20:15:07 +0000, Neven Sajko wrote:
>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.

My bad. An audio interface, such as the onboard thingy or an USB audio
interface could provide for example S/PDIF.
USB is good, but using more than one audio interface comes with
pitfalls.

>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.

So for recording you just need one USB microphone, but for playback you
still need another audio interface. Most likely you will use your
on-board audio device. Most likely you mobo provides S/PDIF, so from
my point of view, I would tend to go with S/PDIF instead of USB.

My point of view is biased, since I'm a pro-audio user. IOW I try
to ensure that jackd usage is as easy as it could be. If you are using
pulseaudio, my thoughts might be absolutely irrelevant.

As a former audio engineer who worked for one of the two famous German
microphone companies, my intuitive thought is still to prefer S/PDIF
over USB. Perhaps I'm just a dino who missed that all gear nowadays is
equipped with USB. In my experiences a lot of consumer gear provides
S/PDIF, but not necessarily USB, so assumed you one day want to connect
your digital microphone to some other equipment (not to a computer),
there might be no USB port available, while S/PDIF usually is available.