External digital USB sound card

I was asked if Hauptwerk would recognize an external ASIO USB sound card such as

https://www.ebay.com/itm/112595454217?vectorid=229466&lgeo=1&item=112595454217&rmvSB=true&autorefresh=true

I don't have any experience with such, hense the question. If not this external sound card, any suggestions? Person would like to use it with a laptop in place of the built in laptop Direct sound. Is latency an issue?

Rgds,
Ed

I don't see how this unit is any different than other USB audio interfaces other than it is small and of unknown quality.

The question of concern would be is there any problem with Hauptwerk recognizing and communicating with an external sound card. Just don't recall much conversation in that regard.

Rgds,
Ed

[mdyde]

Hello Ed,

[Topic moved here.]

Hauptwerk just queries the list of ASIO drivers that are installed on the computer. It has no knowledge of whether their devices are actually internal or external to the computer, or whether they're USB, FireWire, PCIe, etc. Those things are handled by the device's driver and hardware.

USB is the most common type of connection for audio interfaces these days, and probably the majority of Hauptwerk users use USB interfaces (myself included), so there's no problem per-se with using an audio interface that connects by USB. As wih any audio or MIDI interface, you just have to make sure that the current version of its driver and firmware are installed, and that the device is connected and powered up before you launch Hauptwerk, and that it remains so all of the time that Hauptwerk is actually running. (Hauptwerk doesn't support 'hot-plugging' devices.)

When using any USB audio or MIDI interface on Windows, you should disable all Windows power-saving functions, including the options for putting USB ports/devices to sleep. For example, on Windows 10 you would use 'Windows Control Panel | System | Power and sleep | Additional power settings', select the 'High performance' power plan, then click its 'Change plan settings | Change advanced power settings', then make sure that the settings are set as follows:
- Sleep: Hibernate after = Never (for 'plugged in' if present)
- USB settings: USB selective suspend setting = Disabled (for 'plugged in' if present)
- PCI Express: Link state power management = Off (for 'plugged in' if present)
- Processor power management: Minimum processor state = 100% (for 'plugged in' if present)
- Hard disk: Turn off hard disk after = Never (for 'plugged in' if present)
... then OK all of the screens.

I was asked if Hauptwerk would recognize an external ASIO USB sound card such as

https://www.ebay.com/itm/112595454217?v ... fresh=true

I have no experience with that particular make or model of USB audio interface, so I can't comment on how well it might work or perform. My general inclination would be to consider models from known and proven makers of professional/semi-professional audio interfaces for the recording studio market, such RME, MOTU, M-Audio, etc.

Do appreciate, Martin, thanks.

Rgds,
Ed

From my own experience I can report that a USB interface (RME Fireface UC) works better than two parallel PCI-X interfaces (RME HDSP AIO). The most harmless were still occasional crackers, but the worst thing I found was the rather incompatibility with the operating system. Every time Windows 10 upgraded to a higher version, I had to re-learn all MIDI channels.
Why did I use two cards and not one with an expansion card? My monitor speakers (4 pieces) offer digital (S-PDIF) inputs, which in turn makes them virtually noise-free. If I controlled them analogously, they would be much more noisy.
In my search for a USB interface I only found RME, which offers two independent digital outputs. The latency is slightly higher than with the internal cards, but that doesn't matter when playing.