[LAU] Intel-HDA sound issues

[Susan Cragin]

Is an m-audio sufficient for my use? Well, you decide. 
My use is for speech recognition. I need the best input sound available, with the lowest latency. 
Both are tremendously important for speech recognition accuracy. (Low latency helps with accuracy as well as speed.)
I run Dragon NaturallySpeaking through Wine. Wine does not play well with Pulse, so I disable Pulse.
I also need portable hardware that will work with a laptop. Mine is an ASUS. The built-in card is an hda-intel, so I must use something else.
Eventually, I want to tweak my computer for the lowest latency possible, and get the best portable USB device, but right now I'm content just to update my Intrepid real-time, and get a decent USB soundcard. 
Susan

-----Original Message-----
>From: Jacob Lee <artdent at gmail.com>
>Sent: Oct 23, 2008 7:23 PM
>To: Susan Cragin <susancragin at earthlink.net>
>Cc: linux-audio-user at lists.linuxaudio.org
>Subject: Re: [LAU] Intel-HDA sound issues
>
>On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 9:06 PM, Susan Cragin <susancragin at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> Anyone have any luck with an m-audio transit?
>
>Yes and no. It works fine and has great sound quality, but there are a
>few caveats:
>- it needs custom firmware. You need "madfuload", which comes with
>many distros (or its homepage is http://usb-midi-fw.sourceforge.net/
>). Getting madfuload to run automatically (i.e. when you plug in the
>card) is occasionally challenging.
>- the built-in mic preamp doesn't provide much gain. I needed to use
>an external preamp.
>- one tiny 1/8'' connector for two input channels; you'll need
>adapters to turn that into two 1/4'' (unbalanced) line ins, and I
>occasionally get loud static by accidentally jostling the adapter.
>
>Last: even at mediocre latency settings (e.g. -n 3 -p 512), and having
>adjusted the IRQ priorities and so forth, I get occasional xruns.
>However, I think this is a problem with my laptop and not with the
>sound card, for two reasons:
>- I had no better luck with another usb sound card
>- I see xruns when the lcd tries to dim itself or when I go into the
>power savings dialog, leading me to suspect the video card.
>So right now I'm inclined to blame the video card hogging the bus or
>something like that, though I honestly have no clue. But it's probably
>not the fault of the Transit.
>
>In sum, it's a decent card for the price, if it's sufficient for your uses.
>
>-- 
>Jacob Lee
>artdent at gmail.com