USB audio alternative -- Behringer UCA202 Audio Interface

[macs_forever]

Some boards don't have compatible audio. Even the ones that are compatible don't always yield the best sound. If the audio drivers in MultiBeast don't do it for you, the following card on Amazon will do the trick via USB:

Behringer UCA202 Audio Interface -- http://www.amazon.com/Behringer-UCA202-Audio-Interface/dp/B000KW2YEI/

No drivers, It just works out of the box. I haven't noticed any lag, but I always hook it directly to the motherboard. Putting a hub in the middle would likely hurt audio quality.

 

[DBP]

I haven't noticed any lag, but I always hook it directly to the motherboard. Putting a hub in the middle would likely hurt audio quality.

How?

• By not supplying enough power? I would definitely use a powered hub just to be sure.
• Or by introducing latency? If any USB 2+ hub introduced enough latency to affect even 96 kHz 24-bit audio I would throw it in a bin. Hard.
  Same goes for something that would introduce errors into the audio signal.

Probably a moot point: everything except laptops has 3 billion USB ports these days anyway.

Looks like a nice box. I have a lower-budget headphone/microphone USB dongle which does a reasonable job if on-board audio isn't detected, but it offers no pretence of competing with this thing.

 

[macs_forever]

Only repeating what I saw in a few reviews. Then again, they were Windows users. Also depends upon the hub and what is attached to it. Some hubs drop to USB 1 speed if a USB 1 device is hooked to it. Most keyboards are USB 1.

 

[franknitty]

Got one of these 2 months ago. I can say that it was the best choice I made for enhancing the audio on my Hack. Sound is so crisp and clear and it automatically works w/o drivers - don't forget to enable it in Sys pref ;-)

 

[JonW]

A cheap USB audio device solved my audio headaches as well-- my Gigabyte X79-UP4-based machine would occasionally "lose" its onboard audio after going to sleep, but a Griffen iMic USB audio device I had sitting around solved the issue with zero hassle. I would highly recommend it as a workaround if you're getting frustrated with audio issues.

 

[Power-Pill]

A cheap USB audio device solved my audio headaches as well-- my Gigabyte X79-UP4-based machine would occasionally "lose" its onboard audio after going to sleep, but a Griffen iMic USB audio device I had sitting around solved the issue with zero hassle. I would highly recommend it as a workaround if you're getting frustrated with audio issues.

Didn't work.