Low cost audio interface

[pcarver]

I just wanted to post a link for anybody who might be interested.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid ... M2&cat=SND

I just bought two of these. At $6.50 each I figured what's the worst that could happen. I won't say they're audiophile quality, but in our Black Box theatre we don't have much of a budget to work with. Plugged into our cheap Soundcraft mixer using a headphone to RCA adapter cable they sounded fine. I was able to plug both of them into the same computer and SCS had no trouble directing sound among the two of them plus the built in audio on the motherboard.

If you've got a budget stick to the high end stuff, but if you just want to add a few more zones to your sound effect cues skip lunch and spend the money on a couple of these.

They didn't need any drivers with Windows XP. I just plugged them in. The first one showed up as USB Audio and when I plugged the second one in I ended up with USB Audio 1 and USB Audio 2. Don't forget to pick up a USB A female to A male cable if your computer's USB ports are close together, these things are a bit wider than a USB port so plugging one in directly will block the adjacent USB port on many computers.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid ... FA&cat=CBL

[SimnaWeb]

I'd be interested to hear what the noise level on this is. They might work well for small setups as long as when there comes a VERY quiet moment in the show you don't hear "snow." (White noise). The built in soundcard on my Dell laptop has such a high noise floor it is unusable and I shed a tear every time I need to pull out headphones and plug them into the laptop. Nothing like a noise floor of -30dB of white noise to drown the background away. I'd pick one up to try it out but funds are low... anyone else able to test this out?

I'll stick with my Edirol UA-1X that cost $20US though for the quick one off shows.

[Boswell]

I picked up similar items off Ebay.co.uk for a couple of £, look identical to the ones in the OP.
Found they were OK but the output did not like the relativly high input impeadance of the desk and was distorted, stuck a 68R resistor across it and it was fine.
I put 4 of these in a 4 port hub and can use them as 4 individual stereo outputs. Not quite as good as a proper s/card but good enough for rehersals!

[wombat]

I think a friend of mine picked up one of these on eBay not to long ago, the quality was surprisingly better than you would have expected but the hardware itself you could tell was pretty flimsy.

[BobCar]

These devices (what I was calling a USB thumb sound card) come in a variety of flavors, qualities and prices. You can even get them in HD &\or 4-channel for around $40 - the last time I checked.
They'll usually work without any drivers and I keep one in my laptop bag just in case I ever have a problem with the onboard sound card (incidentally, I don't get the high noise level from the Dell Inspiron E1505 that someone said they got out of their Dell laptop. Maybe because I max my clips' audio level in editing).
On another subject - I get great sound improvement by running most my clips through a plug-in called BBE Maximizer (http://www.bbesound.com/demo/demo.asp).
Select the longer sample cuts to play and then click to turn On (green light) & Off (red light) the unit to hear the improvement.

Bob

[Theatre III Sound]

I've been loaned an Edirol UA-1EX to try with my laptop running SCS 10.2.0 under XP Pro. I have a few questions about the best setup for this device.

When I first plugged the UA-1EX into the laptop, it found a driver for it and it showed up as "UA-1EX" in the list of physical devices in SCS. I also downloaded and installed the driver provided by EDIROL and now it shows an additional entry of "EDIROL UA-1EX (ASIO)". Which device should I select when setting up production properties? If I select the ASIO driver, do I need to change any audio driver settings? What about settings in the ASIO Control Panel?

There's also a switch on the unit labeled "Advanced Driver - OFF/ON". Anyone know what this switch does?

If anyone in this forum has experience with this device and can give me guidance in how to set it up for the best audio quality, your suggestions/comments are welcome.

Thanks,
Bruce