USB Sound card - Question 1

[DamFlarden]

I recently bought an external sound card / USB DAC.
It sounds better than the on-board option that I used before, so that's good.
But when working in Reason, I get a lot more notifications "computer too slow to play song".
The indicator in Reason (DSP workload) and Windows Task manager both show increased activity when I used this DAC.
Also, when playing a song, I quite often notice hiccups, which didn't occur while using the on-board audio.

Question: does an external USB sound card requires more processing power (for the CPU) compared to an internal (on-board one)?

Kind regards!

[Last Alternative]

What are your computer specs and what kind of USB audio interface is it (make/model)?

[O1B]

It - the DAC - tshould lighten the load AND give better quality audio. My old Pod X3 does that..
Your situation sounds strange to me. Computer? OS? DAC?

Even one of these Behringer AIs ( I have the grey one) sounds "better"

I recently bought an external sound card / USB DAC.
It sounds better than the on-board option that I used before, so that's good.
But when working in Reason, I get a lot more notifications "computer too slow to play song".
The indicator in Reason (DSP workload) and Windows Task manager both show increased activity when I used this DAC.
Also, when playing a song, I quite often notice hiccups, which didn't occur while using the on-board audio.

Question: does an external USB sound card requires more processing power (for the CPU) compared to an internal (on-board one)?

Kind regards!

[normen]

Try changing the buffer size in the Reason preferences.

[DamFlarden]

Well, I know I haven't got the latest CPU and all, and of course I can post all details regarding my set-up, but still, my question keeps the same; does an external USB soundcard (ok, Focusrite Scarlet one 2nd gen) increases the CPU load?
My PC is way better than the adviced configuration by Reason.

I've already experimented with latency settings and so on. Still quite often I get hiccups when playing a relative simple reason file (let's say 8 tracks, with Kong, Expanse (ok, that's a heavy one), ID8, Dr. Octorex and Kilohearts One. When switching back to the on-board sound card, this does not occur. The difference between on-board and the Focusrite can be upto 20% CPU usage.

[Data_Shrine]

Idk if it increasea cpu load but i have more latency with the UR22 (usb) on my maxed out 2014 mbpr than I had on my 2009 machine without using any soundcard. ;_;

Maybe on windows you could check if there's some of driver update for your soundcard?

[normen]

Well, I know I haven't got the latest CPU and all, and of course I can post all details regarding my set-up, but still, my question keeps the same; does an external USB soundcard (ok, Focusrite Scarlet one 2nd gen) increases the CPU load?
My PC is way better than the adviced configuration by Reason.

I've already experimented with latency settings and so on. Still quite often I get hiccups when playing a relative simple reason file (let's say 8 tracks, with Kong, Expanse (ok, that's a heavy one), ID8, Dr. Octorex and Kilohearts One. When switching back to the on-board sound card, this does not occur. The difference between on-board and the Focusrite can be upto 20% CPU usage.

Theres no general answer. A USB device WILL use more CPU power and time to deliver its data compared to a PCI device. A new audio interface WILL use more DSP time if its default buffer size is smaller and you don't care to check it. A badly coded driver CAN waste DSP time and CPU cycles. You also need to discern between DSP load and actual CPU use. You can have 20% CPU use and 100% DSP time use and vice versa.

[DamFlarden]

Tnx Normen, that's a clear answer. I will upgrade my PC (=buying a new one) but I think I'll go for an internal soundcard. With that Focusrite I also encounter other strange behaviour. Last night I was just playing some mp3 files, and at the end of each file, it repeated the last seconds of the last song, before playing the next. Never heard that with the on-board card. Luckily there's a 60 day cash-back warranty.