[LAU] Affordable well-working USB interface with low latency at 48kHz?

[David Kastrup]

David Kastrup <dak at gnu.org> writes:

> Giso Grimm <gg3137 at vegri.net> writes:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> On 23.11.20 02:03, David Kastrup wrote:
>>> "Jeanette C." <julien at mail.upb.de> writes:
>>> 
>>>> Nov 22 2020, David Kastrup has written:
>>>> ...
>>>>> So I am lacking a reasonably solid recommendation of (possibly older but
>>>>> reasonably quality) hardware with 1 or 2 mic inputs and +48V phantom
>>>>> power and likely USB2.0 HiSpeed class compliant, possibly 2 headphone
>>>>> outputs
>>>> ...
>>>> Is it worth investigating the Focusrite Scarlett interfaces? I have read
>>>> here - a few weeks ago - that the 3rd generation is now supported on
>>>> Linux. But the 2nd generation is still listed in some stores. The
>>>> Scarlett 2i2 with two mic preamps +48V phantom power costs about 139EUR,
>>>> the solo - with just one mic preamp - is less than 100 EUR . I think
>>>> these smaller Scarletts used to be a favourite with RaspberryPis, as
>>>> well.
>>>>
>>>> I don't know the latency, but many people speak very favourably about
>>>> them.
>>
>> I recently measured latencies (analog to analog) for some sound cards,
>> including the Focusrite Scarlett solo 3rd gen (2i2 should be the same):
>>
>> https://github.com/gisogrimm/ovbox/wiki/Soundcards
>>
>> From all the USB sound cards I tested the Focusrite Scarlett was the one
>> with the shortest delay.
>
> Very good to know, thanks!  I'll also take a look at the rest of your
> tests.

Question: is there a reason that you are going with buffer sizes of
3*2^n rather than 2^n?  I've not actually tried what Jamulus does in
that situation (but will do) but it seems a bit strange to me.  Does it
have some inherent advantage?

That being said: I was particularly looking for the Presonus Audiobox
USB these days (since I guess Presonus cards newer than the lacklustre
Firebox are supposed to have good preamps/gains) but with regard to
latency, it doesn't seem like the greatest choice.

-- 
David Kastrup