Re: [microsound] iMic

[ben nevile <bbn@xxxxxxxx>]

> usb 1.1 allows for 4 simultaneous audio streams.  thats its major 
> downfall.

no, USB will do at least 8 channels @ 44.1kHz as evidenced by the emi 
2|6 (2in, 6out) and m-audio quattro (4in, 4out).

if you don't need a lot of channels the big drawback of USB-based audio 
is that there's a lot of jitter in the communication.  when I say 
jitter I don't mean max/msp/jitter, I mean there is an inconsistent 
delay in between the sending and receiving of a signal.  because of 
this jitter the interface has to buffer an amount of sound greater than 
the greatest possible delay to ensure that there's always data to send. 
  so USB interfaces tend to have higher latencies than their firewire 
counterparts, which have more consistent throughput (or so I've been 
told.)

bbn

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