A USB Hub That Doesn’t Suck Ass?
I would like to plug in all my USB audio and midi devices, roughly eight of them, into a single powered USB 3.0 hub that won’t drop devices. I’ve tried a couple mainstream over the counter brands and now I think it’s time to search out the exceptional ones. This looks promising, Amazon.com, but I’ll take advice from the DJ forums over Amazon reviews.
Are all of your USB devices “supported” on USB3? NI cards are known to not get along with USB3. My S2 will not show up if plugged into USB3.
My audio device is a Denon DN-X1600 which works just great when I plug it into the 3.0 slot on my laptop. Some of the other devices like the VCI100SE are not of course. USB 2.0 is just as good. Whatever people have used and can say they know works.
I have a D-Link H4, works fine but only 4 ports.
Can’t see any hub running 8 reliably for dj’ing
LOL. That pic of Hasselhoff is my fave. I printed out several of those and cut out holes for the crotch and put them over soap dispensers at my office. An-E-waaay…
Thanks for the links. I remember reading those in the past. For real DJing I would never have more than my sound card and if I am feeling creative an X1 plugged in. But at home I play around with Ableton and have all sorts of gear plugged in. I want to be able to just pick up a device midi map it and then start using it rather than trying to figure out what device I can unplug. : |
The reason I was thinking a powered USB3 hub would be best is because with 4 Gbit/s it would be able to handle the over head of eight devices plugged in.
I’ve never used a USB hub that didn’t work flawlessly with my gear (lpd8, maschine, apple keyboard, logitech track ball, X1s, VCM-600, nanokontrol2, keystation 49e, other hubs, iLok, thumb drives, external dvd burners, etc.). Cheapest one was $4 at Best Buy (un-powered 4-port, which usually ran a pair of X1s and Maschine when I was on that setup without a problem)…most expensive was a powered 7-port from Think Geek with “power” switches…also a 7-port think geek octopus thing that I lost and a 7port cheap thing from Fry’s.
At some point I realized that only one company made the chipsets for 7-port hubs and I just started buying them because they all worked.
I really don’t understand what the big deal is. With the exception of always plugging the audio interface straight into the computer (and running everything else off the other port) and having realistic expectations (my un-powered one won’t run my DVD burner) I’ve never bought a USB hub that was disappointing.
Maybe I’m just lucky.
Closing this since there are multiple threads on the subject.