[Techtalk] o great audio geeks... USB a/d converters

[Alvin Goats]

Hi Carla,

This particular gadget just makes a microphone to USB connection. It's 
similar to the video to USB converters like the K-World USB2800D 
V-Stream (converts video and audio to mpeg and mp3). The drawback is 
that the gadget you mention is for microphones only.

I have a stereo cassette recorder hooked up to my sound card via the 
line in port with the line out on the recorder. This allows me to record 
my music to hard disk and later convert to mp3's or CD's. You'd have to 
have a special patch cord to connect the line out of a stereo to two of  
microphone converters above and capture two seperate channels of raw sound.

Now, if you're a professional studio and you're using the microphones to 
record live sound, this gadget sounds pretty interesting. Data is raw 
format, single channel and can be digitally mixed with an appropriate 
software package (SoundStudio can mix a few channels together, other 
software is out there that will mix some 16 channels or more).

Raw sound or wav files are extremely large, a stereo vinyl record album 
(the big round black things that go on record players with diamond 
needles for those who don't know or don't remember ;D ) is about 
700Mbytes, so plan on lots of gig's of drive space for all the different 
tracks.

But, I'd keep the sound card just the same.  There's lots of things you 
can do with the microphone, line in (from stereos), line out (going to 
the line in on my recorder) and speakers that you can't do otherwise.


Does this help any?

Alvin