[plonter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ham Sandwich /img/forum/go_quote.gif A USB add-on card would be either PCI or PCI Express. I don't know which flavor of PCI would be better or more suited for USB audio use. If you have a driver problem, like a network driver that hogs the DPC latency, then trying an add-on USB card won't fix that. You'd need to address the problem network driver issue first. If you're using ASIO4ALL to do ASIO then you're not really doing true ASIO. ASIO4ALL is cheating and doing kernel streaming with an ASIO interface. It works for some, but isn't the same as using a true ASIO driver. The problem there is that generic USB DACs don't come with an ASIO driver and getting a proper ASIO driver from a third party company costs money and I'm not sure of the quality of those ASIO drivers. With Vista and Windows 7 the WASAPI interface is probably better going forward than ASIO, at least for general consumer playback rather than pro-audio purposes.

thanks,maybe it is time to upgrade to windows 7 anyway.

 

[upstateguy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by plonter /img/forum/go_quote.gif although I think that the problem may be not in the usb but software related,because when not using asio there are no pops at all. so I guess it's either the asio (which i doubt because everyone is using it) or the dac driver. I will check it out, thanks for the responses anyway.

That happened to me when I was evaluating the USB ports.

What worked (for me): Uninstall ASIO4ALL, delete all associated folders, etc. and reinstall the latest version.

USG

 

[upstateguy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ham Sandwich /img/forum/go_quote.gif If you're using ASIO4ALL to do ASIO then you're not really doing true ASIO. ASIO4ALL is cheating and doing kernel streaming with an ASIO interface. It works for some, but isn't the same as using a true ASIO driver. The problem there is that generic USB DACs don't come with an ASIO driver and getting a proper ASIO driver from a third party company costs money and I'm not sure of the quality of those ASIO drivers. With Vista and Windows 7 the WASAPI interface is probably better going forward than ASIO, at least for general consumer playback rather than pro-audio purposes.

An interesting note:

I bought my wife a new computer with windows 7 on it. While I was setting it up for her, I decided to listen to some music. I put the new foobar, etc., on, and plugged in the USB cable from my XP laptop rig.

This is the first time I ever swapped out a computer and here's what happened:

ASIO4ALL showed 48kHz at my North Star no matter what I did, and believe me I tried everything.

KS for USB audio Device gave 44.1.

Wasapi also gave 44.1 but I had to lower the buffer to under 1000 to get it to work. It sounded great.

The big surprise was that Null Output also registered 44.1 on the North Star, but I didn't use it.

I set it on USB Wasapi and didn't do any thing else.

My basic impression, when I went back to my regular laptop was that wasapi from an i5 windows 7 computer sounds noticeably cleaner than asio4all out of a 3GHz Northwood XP laptop.

USG

 

[upstateguy]

Since the transition to the new format my subscriptions stopped working, so I thought I'd give this a bump because I still think I hear a difference.
 
USG

 

[leeperry]

some ppl seem to believe that a $549 USB cable sounds better than a $114: http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue49/usb.htm
 
so why not? I love circular logic.

 

[Edwood]

The difference I hear in my USB ports is either I hear something or I don't.
 
As in one's working fine, or there's something wrong with the cable or the port.
 
Usually I have problems with overloaded USB ports not having enough power, especially hubs.
 
And sometimes there's ground loops, which even the most expensive USB cable will do nothing about it.  I have found weird occasions where a USB cable has 2 wire bundles, and the other has 3.  And the one with 2 does not work with all components.
 
-Ed

 

[AtomikPi]

 
Quote:

ASIO4ALL showed 48kHz at my North Star no matter what I did, and believe me I tried everything.

 
 
I may be stating the obvious, but did you try opening the ASIO options window - the one where you set latency, number of kernel buffers, etc - and unchecking the box that says "force 48 khz" or something like that?

 

[Edwood]

Only USB ports that sounded "different" to me were ones that had something wrong with them.  USB ports not supplying enough power (well below the 500mA current spec), so an audio device starving for power was behaving erratically.  Was just below it's minimum current needs.
 
And others were improperly grounded USB ports, usually front USB ports not properly grounded to the computer case.
 
-Ed

 

[Pageygeeza]

Sorry for being a sceptic on this, but how can different USB ports change audio quality?
 
Digital data is digital data.  Might as well say that using a different USB ports will make documents on an external device look better.
 
Source data can be changed like changing volume and eq, but as soon as the digital data is produced by whatever audio player is being used, it can't be changed.
 
Just my two pennies worth.

 

[upstateguy]

 
Quote:

some ppl seem to believe that a $549 USB cable sounds better than a $114: http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue49/usb.htm
 
so why not? I love circular logic.

Makes perfect sense to me.

 
Quote:

 
 
 
I may be stating the obvious, but did you try opening the ASIO options window - the one where you set latency, number of kernel buffers, etc - and unchecking the box that says "force 48 khz" or something like that?

Never  did figure it out.    Wasapi seemed better and wife has the computer now.  Oh Well. 

 
Quote:

Sorry for being a sceptic on this, but how can different USB ports change audio quality?
 
Digital data is digital data.  Might as well say that using a different USB ports will make documents on an external device look better.
 
Source data can be changed like changing volume and eq, but as soon as the digital data is produced by whatever audio player is being used, it can't be changed.
 
Just my two pennies worth.

I think it was Steve Nugent that said all USB ports are not the same......  I'm just asking around.  

 
Then, of course, there is the jitter thing..........  see the HiFace thread   http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/449885/usb-to-spdif-converters-shoot-out-emu-0404-usb-vs-musiland-monitor-01-usd-vs-teralink-x-vs-m2tech-hiface/1395

 

[Lil' Knight]

Interesting. Did you manage to find that kind of software?
Quote:

There are utilities that enumerate all of the available USB ports and tell you what is on a hub, what is shared with what, how much power there is available for each port, whether it is running at USB 1 speed or USB 2 speed, and other geeky info. Unfortunately, I do not know off-hand a utility that does that. You can get that info from Device Manager (if you're using Windows), but the info is not presented in a way a normal mortal would find understandable. Maybe someone who is more hardware geek than me would know of a suitable software utility that will enumerate the USB ports and what is connected to what?

 

[upstateguy]

Quote:

Interesting. Did you manage to find that kind of software?

 

you can do this with your hardware manager.

 

[Ham Sandwich]

Quote:

Interesting. Did you manage to find that kind of software?

 

The free evaluation version of SiSoftware Sandra gives you some info about USB ports and connections.  But I don't think it presents the info in a way that makes it clear or easily useful for our purpose.
 
Microsoft has a USBView.  It's a sample application included in their device driver development kit. It can be downloaded here.  It presents the USB info in a tree view which I think makes it more understandable and useful.  But it is also presented very "geek" since it is a sample application designed for developers to play with and learn how to do things.
 
NirSoft has a utility called USBDeview.  I hesitate to mention it because the info is presented in a table in a most unuseful manner.  But it does include lots of info about each USB device and port.  It lets you know which ports you've plugged devices in before.  Very geek.
 
Then there is also good old Device Manager.  Use the view "Devices by type".  Expand the "Universal Serial Bus controllers" branch.  Right click on each sub-branch and look at the properties for each.

 

[dvw]

USB data are transported in packets. This means all the digital signal are packaged in a container.
 
The analogy can be like water being bottled and taken home in a car instead of a pipe. So if music sounds better with different USB cable/port, it's like saying the bottled water taste better if it comes home in a Mercedes instead of a Toyota.

 

[upstateguy]

Quote:

USB data are transported in packets. This means all the digital signal are packaged in a container.
 
The analogy can be like water being bottled and taken home in a car instead of a pipe. So if music sounds better with different USB cable/port, it's like saying the bottled water taste better if it comes home in a Mercedes instead of a Toyota.

Are you absolutely sure?  What about the people who report hearing their mouse while scrolling? 
 
Does jitter somehow figure into this?
 
USG