USB audio interface recomendation.

I play guitar and like to record riffs here and there to incorporate into songs at some point in the future. I was using an internal M-Audio card for a couple years and it worked fine for non-professional recording on FreeBSD. It unfortunately died on me recently so I would like to replace it with a USB interface. I would assume most interfaces would be compatible with the USB audio driver for simple recording, but I really don't want to buy an interface to find it doesn't work so I'd like to know if anyone uses an interface for recording on FreeBSD in a similar fashion and what you use for the hardware. I'm not concerned with brand names as I already have a more or less complete studio setup using Windows and decent recording hardware, but I use a fire-wire interface for that so it wont work with FreeBSD. I would rather not have to boot into Windows for something simple if I don't need to. Thanks ahead for your time/insight.
 
Did you ever come up with FreeBSD suitable interface? I'm using a ProSonus AudioBox 44VSL (USB). Seems to work fine, but I can't seem to access the individual inputs and outputs.

Man page SND_UAUDIO(4)()
The PCM framework in FreeBSD currently doesn't support the full set of USB audio mixer controls. Some mixer controls are only available as dev.pcm.%d.mixer sysctls.​

I'm not sure how that effects me.

uname -a
Code:
FreeBSD noisey.027esc.net 10.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 10.2-RELEASE #0 r286666: Wed Aug 12 15:26:37 UTC 2015 
root@releng1.nyi.freebsd.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  amd64

relevant dmesg:
Code:
uaudio0: <AudioBox 44 VSL > on usbus1
uaudio0: Play: 96000 Hz, 4 ch, 32-bit S-LE PCM format, 2x8ms buffer.
uaudio0: Play: 88200 Hz, 4 ch, 32-bit S-LE PCM format, 2x8ms buffer.
uaudio0: Play: 48000 Hz, 4 ch, 32-bit S-LE PCM format, 2x8ms buffer.
uaudio0: Play: 44100 Hz, 4 ch, 32-bit S-LE PCM format, 2x8ms buffer.
uaudio0: Record: 96000 Hz, 4 ch, 32-bit S-LE PCM format, 2x8ms buffer.
uaudio0: Record: 88200 Hz, 4 ch, 32-bit S-LE PCM format, 2x8ms buffer.
uaudio0: Record: 48000 Hz, 4 ch, 32-bit S-LE PCM format, 2x8ms buffer.
uaudio0: Record: 44100 Hz, 4 ch, 32-bit S-LE PCM format, 2x8ms buffer.
uaudio0: MIDI sequencer.
 
Hi.

I haven't tried recording with an interface since making the original post so I'm really not sure what works or doesn't, sorry. Right now I use Windows for recording when I have the time. I do have a Focusrite Scarlett 18i6 USB 2.0 audio interface I am using for audio output on FreeBSD and it does work flawlessly for that.

Maybe try asking this on the freebsd-usb mailing list for a better/more thorough answer.
 
Hello,

Pretty much the same here. I'm trying to get to the point of using FreeBSD for simple projects. But, I find when I get started on something more complicated, requiring more versatility, I boot into Windows. Ardour (kinda) comes close to Sonar, but I have not been able to get it to compile under FreeBSD. That will be a thread in another forum. ;)

Thank you.

-JJ
 
I've been meaning to try Ardour out but lack of recording inputs(right now) and Windows VST plugin support has prevented that so far. I have a lot of paid Windows VST plugins I use mainly in Cubase. I guess you can get Windows VST plugin support under Ardour using WINE though I'd rather not go that route.

As for having problems compiling Ardour, definitely start a new thread and I'll jump in and help if I can. :)
 
Back
Top