quality of recording audio from ti usb
 

im using the ti as a soundcard with the usb as my pc soundcard is a cheap one.
is there any problem with the quality of the audio using the usb connection when youre recording a set of midi tracks to audio?

i read in the tutorial that its best to switch to the analog outs when recording audio:

"While recording, we recommend that you switch the Main
Outs of the part you are about to record to Analog 1+2 instead
of USB. This way, the audio data doesn’t need to travel from
the Virus TI into the Virus Control and from there to your audio
interface. Instead it’s being sent straight to the Virus’ analog out.
Once you have finished recording this particular track, switch
the Main Outs back to USB in order to allow this part to be fully
latency-compensated."

i assumed this would be to do with reducing latency or something but could it also be theres a limit to the amount of audio that can go through the usb and affect the final audio quality. ive always used the usb connection for recording up til now.

both of the reasons you listed are correct... the plug-in may create additional latency... *and* you're limited to 44/16 resolution.

if you have a crappy soundcard, stick with the USB, and adjust for the latency manually by moving the audio once you get a good take (or record with very small vector size <128 )

using the analog outs while recording (midi events) doesn't prevent you from switching back to USB afterwards, so you get the best of both worlds. the latency to be expected these days is much smaller than when we wrote that paragraph. for one, the software and drivers improved over time, the average DAW is much more powerful and therefore can handle low latency settings better.

and as for the 44.1/bit aspect mention i would challenge anybody to hear the difference. we are not talking about headroom and summing here. the loss in quality by doing a D/A-A/D conversion will very likely harm the signal much more.

best, marc