Audio over USB.

dos2unix

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 3, 2019
Messages
3,237
Reaction score
2,988
Credits
28,493
Most of my computers have audio jacks on them. You know what they look like, 3.5mm or 1/8th inch audio ports.
You probably have your speakers plugged into this right now.

But I do have a couple of computers that have no audio ports, at all. Many of the servers in my company datacenter have no audio ports at all.
This really isn't a problem for servers, they rarely need audio.

My main daily driver (the computer I'm typing this on now) does have built-in audio ports, but I don't use them, I have a Creative Labs SoundBlaster card that has audio ports and I use those.

But on many of my other computers, I do not use the audio ports at all. All audio goes through my USB ports.

For example, I have this gaming headset. (I'm not a gamer, but my grandson is)

It plugs into a USB port.


I have these speakers connected to a couple of computers, I love them.


I use this microphone.


For my main audio workstation, I have a USB DAC.


I don't know that there is any big advantage or improved audio quality using USB over the audio ports, it's just a preference.
But I was wondering does anyone else do this?

I know some computers also come with SP/DIF optical ports for audio, does anybody use these? My Soundblaster card
has an SP/DIF port and I briefly used it before I got the speakers I'm using now.
 


I understand USB DACs are generally superior to the audio headphone socket output. I've used external USB DACs for about 20 years on Linux.

USB DAC's supporting class 2 audio appear to be the current must have but I rarely play files with a resolution greater than standard CD quality (16bit/44.1kHz). Higher resolution is hard for me to discern any significant improvement but most USB DACs support them for golden ear audiophiles these days.

Current DAC is a 'Topping D10s' which had a decent review over on the ASR forum when measured. I use a separate class D amplifier, passive speakers and an active sub for the rest of the chain.

Due to the isolation, SP/DIF is ideal for electrically noisy computers with irritating background whining noises breaking through on the ground connection with USB.
 
@dos2unix :-

I don't know about a discrete audio card (like a SoundBlaster, etc.) But I'm with you all the way when it comes to general-purpose audio over USB.

Simple reason is this; invariably, whether microphone, headphones, headset (headphone + built-in 'boom' microphone).....whatever, they always seem to have their own built-in, dedicated audio cards. And that makes selecting audio input or output source SO much simpler. Which, in turn, makes the overall user experience much easier to live with...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

I have two headsets. A Logitech H340 headset is my 'daily workhorse', but for watching movies in comfort without a cable to trip over, I found a nicely understated 'gamer' set on Amazon.....the GS401 "Stincoo" (!), by a Chinese firm called SOMiC. Detachable plug-in boom mike, and although it HAS RGB lighting it's quite minimal, not 'in-yer-face', and you CAN turn it off.

I didn't want Bluetooth, y'see; it's always been problematic for us in Puppy, so I wanted good old 2.4 GHz wireless.....which cut my choices down drastically. But these have standard 'wireless', and - like the H340 - have their own audio card built-in to the somewhat chunky dongle. They're comfy for hours at a time, and the sound quality is really surprising for the price.

At the end of the day, it boils down to finding ways of doing stuff that works well for YOU. Listen to the opinions of others, by all means.....but don't WORRY about them; they're not the ones who are using your system, are they?

Only you do that.


Mike. ;)
 
Last edited:

Members online


Latest posts

Top