USB 1.0 or 2.0 sound card?

I am a newbie to midi recording and using Cakewalk's Music Creator 3.0 software.

My current setup is an Ensonics midi keyboard (with lots of sounds) hooked up via midi to USB to my desktop computer. I play the keyboard through the soft synths on the PC and listen through the PC. Unfortunately, the sound card built onto the mother-board produces a latency which makes it impossible for my fingers to play along with the metronome and/or a previously recorded track. Also, my desktop PC is a slim-line version and cannot handle another PCI card inside. The internal sound card doesn't support ASIO drivers (I have WDM selected) and I've played around with buffer sizes to minimize latency, but to no avail.

Thus, I am looking at purchasing a USB sound card with ASIO drivers to eliminate the latency (my PC doesn't support firewire).

My question: I have seen several USB 1.0 devices (such as the M-Audio FastTrack) as well as a soon-to-be released E-Mu 0202 which runs USB 2.0. Some folks have told me that the bandwidth of the USB 1.0 could limit playback of audio material (which is certainly believable). Others have told me that, even if I use many audio tracks inside Music Creator, as long as I only output the many audio tracks through 2 outputs I won't have a problem with playback or recording. So, which is correct here - Should I purchase the USB 1.0 sound card now or wait until the USB 2.0 device is being shipped by the end of the summer? How are multiple midi and/or audio tracks in MC actually merged down and/or output through the sound card? Will bandwith be a problem with a USB 1.0 device? One thing for sure, I don't want to run into this latency problem again!

Thanks for any suggestions/help.

-- Pete

Latency is a fact of life right now and the type of data connection is not the problem. In fact USB 1.x is plenty fast enough for the amount of I/O on the interfaces so any more speed would go to waste and not improve performace. In fact it could hurt because USB needs your CPU to help manage all that traffic and the faster you go the more attention it needs. Using more CPU is not good for latency.

First note, when you select WDM I think you use the slider inside Cakewalk to adjust the latency, not the "buffers" setting like you do with ASIO. So you may want to look at that again.

The lowest latency you can get depends on many factors and is closely related to the speed of your system and how much load it's under already. Also the quality of the driver can be an issue that you can't do anything about and not related to the type of connection (USB, Firewire, PCI, etc.).

As a rule Firewire is better because it does not load down the CPU like USB 1.x and USB 2 do. However, if you don't have a firewire port and can't add one you are stuck with USB.

The driver type is not a sure thing either, some sound cards can achieve lower latency with ASIO but not all, some do better with WDM it just depends on the model. The only way to tell is to try it both ways and understand clearly how to test each one.

I have not used Music Creator 3.0 so I'm not sure if it works the same way as Sonar but in Sonar you have to use the latency slider in Options / Audio to adjust latency if you have selected the WDM driver type. If you have selected the ASIO driver type you have to use the control panel dialog that comes with the audio interface driver to adjust the "buffers" setting. Each one is different and some may just call it "latency" expressed in milliseconds. There should be a system tray icon or control panel icon to pop up the ASIO control panel for your card.

Also, there is a free generic ASIO driver on the web you could try with your built in card, google for asio4all and see if it works with your card. That one might get the latency down some with what you have.

Some day computers might be so fast that latency becomes less then a millisecond or 1 or 2 millisecond at most but for now most computers can't do that. All you can do is try to get your midi tracks done first before you add any effects plugins so you can tune the latency as low as it will go. Also, bounce finished tracks to audio so you can reduce the load by unloaded any software synths.

Frank,

So, f rom what you say I definitely should not get a USB 2.0 device? There must be a trade-off here. Does anyone have direct experience with a native USB 2.0 or USB 1.0 device?

Thanks.

-- Pete

There are not a whole lot of USB2 devices out there. There are some, to be sure, but they tend to be a bit more expensive. You are correct in that you can have 20 tracks playing on your computer that feed a stereo output. In that case, USB 1 will work just fine. Beware of newly released gear. It almost never works as advertised. Getting something older will often work better due to maturity of drivers, hardware fixes, etc...