Always use the same USB ports for your devices

[Wolfgang]

Do you always use the same USB ports? Windows can be finicky with this. Last Saturday I experienced this during a rehearsal where I lost the camera every time when accessing the setup screen, and I had to restart Aerodrums. I repeated this 3 times and was starting to panic slightly, when I saw that I had swapped the USB ports of the sound card and the camera. Stopping the computer, reversing USB cables and restarting solved the problem.

[randalraywilson]

Wolfgang,
I'm shopping for usb sound cards. What do you use?

[Wolfgang]

Hi,
This is a good decision. Do you have a PC or a MAC? How much do you want to invest? How do you want to use the sound card? At home with your HiFi system or in rehearsal studios / for live performances? Do you want to have more than 2 input channels?

[randalraywilson]

PC
Not sure about investment...depends on benefits. But I'm cheap.
At home AND live
2 seems like plenty



Thanks.

[Wolfgang]

First some general things about sound cards. NEVER buy a sound card without optimized ASIO drivers from the manufacturer. Before buying, go to the manufacturer’s site and search if they have an ASIO driver for your card. If they say ASIO4All, run away. The problem is you won’t find cheap sound cards with an official driver. And since the Corona crisis all the cards I’ve seen are over 30% more expensive.

Second, if you want to play live you need 6,35 Jack outputs, balanced if you want longer cables than 5m, or XLR outputs. Avoid adapters.

If I would be a purist I would say go Focusrite, but I’m rather pragmatic and I’ve chosen Behringer. They have the best quality/price ratio. My card I’m using at home would be a little too much, it’s the UMC1820 with 8 in and 10 outputs, but most of the musicians with whom I play over the internet since Corona are using the UMC202HD or the UMC204HD with MIDI in/out.

If this is too expensive, you can read what I wrote “About USB sound-cards” in this post: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7229&p=42744&hilit= ... .40#p42744
and here:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=34004&p=40246&hilit ... .40#p40246
Most of the time when I’m outside I’m still using the mentioned driver with my Behringer UMA25S midi controller keyboard with audio output or just the mentioned sound-card when I don’t need a MIDI controller.

[randalraywilson]

Thank you!