Any good USB soundcards to be had

[falcon23]

I have a USB headset,and wondering what you all would reccomend as far as a SC with USB..

                 Thanks..

[wrag]

Recommendation?

Don't use a USB headset?

[1701E]

As I understand it, USB headsets don't need a SoundCard as they have their own software/drivers and whatnot.

I may be wrong though.

[Skuzzy]

USB headsets use the CPU to do all the work.  They are basically AC97 sound devices, that go through another hardware layer (USB to PCI) to finally get sounds to play.

[1701E]

USB headsets use the CPU to do all the work.  They are basically AC97 sound devices, that go through another hardware layer (USB to PCI) to finally get sounds to play.

If they do that Skuzzy, then how come my USB headset uses less CPU then my Soundcard when listening to music?  Not trying to say you're wrong or anything, I am really curious why it would work like that if it uses the CPU.

[Skuzzy]

Crappy sound card?  How are you measuring the CPU usage?  Does it take into account IRQ overhead (that is where USB really is piggish)?  Decoding music files is very CPU intensive.  Nevermind the actual playing of them.

The USB bus is a dumb serial interface.  It has absolutely no CPU or hardware assistance at all.

[1701E]

I just use the Task Managers "CPU usage".
When using Onboard it was 5-7%
When using SoundCard it is 2-4%
With a USB Headset is it 0-2%

Is there a better way to measure CPU use?

[Skuzzy]

Something is screwed up then.  You cannot decode a music file with 0% CPU usage.  The act of decoding it is going to use CPU time.

The Task Manager cannot be trusted to give actually usage times due to all the other software that may or may not be running at any given time.

There is absolutely no way a USB headset can use less CPU time than a decent sound card.  It simply cannot happen.