USB recording & 3x independent USB

[bheliker]

Hi all;

I'm doing some recording, with three different mics, very special and high-speed. Each uses about 60% of the throughput of USB 2.0, so whenever I put two on the same bus, quality starts dropping. The old Mac Mini (2010, with 5 USB ports on the back) has four separate internal USB busses and the five ports on the back are spread among three of these. The new one... doesn't It has three busses and one is used by Thunderbolt.

Has anyone run into this before, or have any solution? I'm not stuck with Mac, but I do need it small enough to fit in my cabinet. Plan B is to buy a Shuttle PC or similar and put three PCI cards with USB ports on them. That just sounds ugly so I want to avoid it if I can. I don't have USB 3 drivers for these so that out.

Anyone have a 2010 Mac Mini they want to sell?

Thanks!
Brett

[PeterSt]

I didn't do the math, but what sample rate (/bit depth) are you using for recording that would consume 60% of the USB2 spec for even one channel ? (the one channel seems justifyable from one mic, right ?)

IOW, something seems to be wrong here ...

[bheliker]

Ok, you got me. These aren't typical mics, I'm building them from scratch and they have very special purposes. Remember that music video Radiohead made a couple years ago, with the 3d dots? Think of it like that. A very special application with very special recorders – I can't really say more right now. But they generate a LOT of data in from a lot of frequencies. Thanks!