I have a personal recording studio that I built for my own use, and most of my sound interfaces use USB. I've always had a hard time getting good, low latency numbers, which matters with some recording gear, like the Presonus 1818vsl, particularly when used on Linux devices.
I did some research, and discovered that there are two driver models for the USB 1.1 layer, and they're still important on USB 2.0 cards. The models are UHCI and OHCI, and while they look the same to the user and to software, they function very differently inside - the UHCI cards make the processor do all the grunt work of being a USB port, and the OHCI cards do it themselves, in hardware. This means that UHCI cards are generating a lot more bus interrupts than OHCI cards, and are also using more CPU (processor) time.
The latter isn't very important, but the interrupt load is _very_ important, in live audio capture, because you never want your captures to be interrupted by anything else.
_This_ is an OCHI chipset card, using a chipset made by NEC of Japan. It replaced a UCHI chipset card, which was made by Intel. And while there's no meaningful difference for most applications (printing, gaming, skype, etc), there is a _huge_ difference in a recording studio environment. My latency numbers in Ardour on Linux dropped from a working minimum of 30ms all the way down to what seems to be a workable minimum of 0.7ms - a 97.7% drop, far, far more than I expected.
As far as I know, NEC and SiS make only OHCI chipsets, and Intel and VIA make only UHCI chipsets. Other chipmakers, I don't know. But this card uses NEC chips, and so far, everything is great.
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More USB ports! Who doesn't need this?
If you're reading this, you probably need more USB ports on your desktop computer. Let's face it, USB is the most important interface on your computer. Who doesn't need more? This card does exactly what it's advertised to do with an NEC controller chip. I installed two of these on an ASUS Sabertooth Z77 TUF motherboard to now have 22 native USB ports (6 of them USB 3.0.) Worked perfectly out of the box. Let's see how long they last.Each port can be further expanded to 127 additional ports with USB Hubs. That 635 more USB ports!PCIe x1 is generally available on all the new desktop computers.The box does mention Windows 7 compatibility. No need for drivers, etc. Installs automatically on boot up.There is an internal USB header, but it shares connections with one of the external ports. Meaning if you use the internal port, you'll lose one of the external ports.The MOLEX power supply plug keeps each port fully powered!
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bilibili
It works without any issue. And it does not ...
Reviewed in Canada on March 5, 2018
