RE: R: opinions on analog - USB converters

[rich <rich@nuvisionsca.com>]

Thanks, Kim.

I was kindof wondering about that, too.  I didn't think Apple had 
invented it, just that they decided to take the risk and move away 
from the serial ports.

If USB isn't terribly friendly to audio, why are so many people 
implementing it into their hardware?  I seem to be seeing it all over 
the place.

Is the Logic/Emagic Midi box the best way to go?  Right now i am 
using MicroLogic on my powermac 7100, which only allows me to open 
one file at a time.  This completely stalls me when cutting and 
pasting for compositions...especially with drum loops.  Thus, i'm 
interested in moving on to a full featured software package.  I was 
planning on migrating over to Cubase, since i would like to swap 
files with someone who is using Cubase on PC.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a USB midi box that would work 
smoothly with Cubase on the Mac?  Also, does anyone know if the 
Cubase files will be cross platform to the PC version of Cubase?

thanks,

rich


>USB was actually created by Intel. It took them and Microsoft forever to
>convince PC makers to replace serial connectors and keyboards and such
>with it. (that still hasn't really happened....)  For a long time it
>looked like it would never take off at all. Apple took a big risk and
>put it on the market first, and in the process helped Intel out a lot to
>get USB established. Apple didn't invent it though.
>
>That has nothing to do with whether it works well for audio or not.
>Audio over USB has always been considered tricky. It just wasn't
>designed to do that. I think you will find that people either used a
>clever and rather expensive method that works ok, or they use a lot of
>buffering to make up for the problems at the expense of latency. I
>imagine you will find some proprietary implementations that are pretty
>good, and plenty of cheap ones that are awful. So far as I know, none of
>them have been good enough to get a dolby logo approval or anything like
>that.
>
>kim