I have quite a collection of external usb hard drives.  Most are usb3.0- at least the ones I'm currently working off of.
My computer has some usb2 ports and some usb3.  I'm trying to plug my most important drives into the usb3 ports, but there are more drives than ports!
 
Am I better off using a powered hub and connecting it to a usb3 port, or just using a usb 2 port that isn't "split" by using a hub?
 
Do audio drives work well if several of them are plugged into a hub?
 

In my opinion, the main thing is using separate drives for the system, and another your audio files.
This prevents one single drive from reading and writing at the same time.
 
So basically the speed difference between USB2 or a USB3 hub that is split won't matter as much if set up right with that forethought. At least not much.
I would still go with the powered USB3 any time possible ... or better yet use a second internal drive for audio read, and external USB3 to render to.
 
And some hubs come with SATA connections, but can't use full speed with USB no matter what.
 
As I understand it all anyway. lol
 
 
 

USB hubs will split the speed over all the connections. Thus, having multiple drives on a hub is a bad idea because it will still only use the speed of a single USB connection. You're better off getting either internal drives, using the externals for backup only or using eSATA if your drives/motherboard have that option.

Are you doing simultaneous writes to all the drives?  If not a USB 3.0 hub should work.  Yes there is some perfomance loss through the hub, but USB 3.0 hubs are far more efficient than USB 2.0, and not just because of speed.  On a USB 2.0 hub, every transfer packet required an acknowledgement before the next packet could be sent.  On USB 3.0 hubs that is no longer the case and acknowledgements (ACK's) can be sent in bulk and to not hinder data transfers.
 
Also are you on laptop or desktop?  If you have a desktop, internal drives are your best bet.  You can turn any USB drive into an internal drive, just remove the casing, it's a normal SATA drive in there.  If it's a Seagate drive, they have connector piece that pops off exposing the SATA connector making it very easy to change.
 
Not all USB 3.0 hubs are the same, do your research and buy the best you can afford.