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Cheap "External USB Sound Card"

Marty111

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Hi everyone!
I would like to know if anyone has experience with one of these cheap usb sound cards : https://www.ebay.com/itm/353734468572
Do they work driverless in windows seven? Are they any good? Stable? What is to be expected?

I'm planning on connecting the optical toslink input of this "External USB Sound Card" to the toslink output of this ADC that I just bought : https://www.cypress.com.tw/en/Product/Audio/Converter/DCT-4N

The goal is to record with my windows 7 computer and finally get rid of any parasitic noise, driver hassle, and so on.

As for the DAC I'm using a topping E30 driverless (for now) which received the signal from my motherbaord toslink output. So the topping will be in charge of the DAC part (hopping there will be no conflict).
 
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JayGilb

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While I personally don't have experience with that usb sound card, I would recommend getting a recording interface that supports ASIO drivers to help minimize latency when recording.

Recording interfaces can be found for under $50 and having a single unit for both recording and playback will work better than a combination of two input devices and a DAC headphone amp. Drivers can be a pain, but a mix-n-match approach to a home recording setup may be more of a problem than dealing with drivers.

As an example M-Audio MTrack is a complete usb recording interface for $50 and from what I can tell, has ASIO driver support.
I'm not sure if it supports Windows 7, some research may be required.

Sorry for the diversion, but I have had a recording setup on my PC for many years and just trying to save you from potential problems in the future.
 
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Marty111

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Hi JayGilb!
I have an analogical monitoring setup with no latency at all. Would Latency be a problem for me?
 

JayGilb

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The latency occurs between recording -> PC processing -> monitoring.
You can directly monitor and listen to the signal before it gets processed by the PC and this eliminates any latency.

Are you recording instruments and vocals ? Do you have a small mixer that you are using mic and instrument input ?
 

somebodyelse

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I would like to know if anyone has experience with one of these cheap usb sound cards : https://www.ebay.com/itm/353734468572
Do they work driverless in windows seven? Are they any good? Stable? What is to be expected?
That looks like one of the ones using the CM6206-LX. It will need drivers for Windows 7. Cmedia used to have a generic driver on their download page, but all the drivers have been removed now, so you will have to make sure the vendor supplies a suitable driver.
 
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Marty111

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You can directly monitor and listen to the signal before it gets processed by the PC and this eliminates any latency.
That's exactly what I do.
Are you recording instruments and vocals ? Do you have a small mixer that you are using mic and instrument input ?
Vocals only. I have a mixer that mixes the music and my voice in real time into my headphones. I use also a echo generator (lexicon mx200) on my voice during singing, but I've never been bothered by latency, the lexicon mx200 doesn't seem to have any latency. Without the echo generator I think I wouldn't like to hear my voice while singing.

@somebodyelse : Thank you for telling me, it's a very important point.
I have to find a driverless win7 device that has toslink in and usb out.
 
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twsecrest

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Hi everyone!
I would like to know if anyone has experience with one of these cheap usb sound cards : https://www.ebay.com/itm/353734468572
Do they work driverless in windows seven? Are they any good? Stable? What is to be expected?

I'm planning on connecting the optical toslink input of this "External USB Sound Card" to the toslink output of this ADC that I just bought : https://www.cypress.com.tw/en/Product/Audio/Converter/DCT-4N

The goal is to record with my windows 7 computer and finally get rid of any parasitic noise, driver hassle, and so on.

As for the DAC I'm using a topping E30 driverless (for now) which received the signal from my motherbaord toslink output. So the topping will be in charge of the DAC part (hopping there will be no conflict).
For audio production, I would suggest getting an Audio Interface.
 
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Marty111

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I 'm opening a new thread to ask a more simple question.
 

twsecrest

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Hi everyone!
I would like to know if anyone has experience with one of these cheap USB sound cards : https://www.ebay.com/itm/353734468572
Do they work driverless in windows seven? Are they any good? Stable? What is to be expected?
I'm planning on connecting the optical Toslink input of this "External USB Sound Card" to the Toslink output of this ADC that I just bought : https://www.cypress.com.tw/en/Product/Audio/Converter/DCT-4N
The goal is to record with my windows 7 computer and finally get rid of any parasitic noise, driver hassle, and so on.
As for the DAC I'm using a topping E30 driverless (for now) which received the signal from my motherbaord Toslink output. So the topping will be in charge of the DAC part (hopping there will be no conflict).
Will the $17 USB sound card work with your Windows 7, about a 99% chance it will work fine with Win 7.
Nothing that connects to USB is driverless, Windows usually comes with the drivers or will download them when you connect the device to the USB port.
Not sure why you would need the DCT-4N, just connect the USB sound card to the PC's USB port and use the sound card's mic input or line-input for recording audio to the PC.
 
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Marty111

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By driverless I mean that I don't have to install a driver. I might need the toslink to get rid of the electronic noise that is very strong on my pc since I have many hard drives.
 

twsecrest

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By driverless I mean that I don't have to install a driver. I might need the Toslink to get rid of the electronic noise that is very strong on my pc since I have many hard drives.
Do you currently have noise issue or just trying to prevent noise issue?
Is this noise from making recordings or getting noise while listening to recordings?
How is your current equipment (audio wise) connected to your Win 7 PC?
 
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Marty111

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Now the preamp of the microphone is connected to the line-in minijack of the motherboard. It used to be fine for years but since I had to install a new ssd it started make a lot more noise both in the input and the output of my motherboard. I tried to remove the new ssd but it was the same (impossible to understand, although I tried).

So right now I have a dac (topping E30) working without driver in toslink, so the listening part is fine apart from some small annoying sounds when cutting the playback in mpchc, youtube ect... But I still have a lot of audio parasites in my recordings. So I have bought a Cosmos ADC wich I am trying to install but there is some huge difficulties under win7 with the drivers not being signed. Anyway the Cosmos even if I could make it work under win7 wouldn't necessarily eliminate the parasites. Hence my quest for a toslink solution also on the ADC side of my setup.

Also as I said I have a analogical monitoring solution that works well, so I'm not bothered with latency.

And the parasites are the bip bip kind of parasites coming from the pc. I have had them forever only at a lower and acceptable level.
 
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