by Spindoctor » Fri Jan 13, 2017 6:51 am
My OWN experience with USB soundcard:
Awhile ago I installed Windows 10 on my laptop -- the Preview, some time before its release. Everything worked perfectly except the sound, which was totally dead. At the time, windows was fighting several types of sound cards, and it seems mine was the worst (HP G60 with Conexant Pebble). Figuring a second sound card would be beneficial anyway, and realizing that my internal one will eventually be fixed, I bought a USB sound card. I forget the brand but it was inexpensive, and actually sounded great.
One day along came a Windows update, and suddenly my internal sound began working. So I continued with the external for main output, and internal for headphones so I could preview. This worked extremely well, and had an added benefit -- those little Windows chimes that correspond to messages, or inserting flash drives, etc., would play through the headphones and not through the external card. I put this to use and enjoyed it, although the only downside was that MIXXX would not work unless that external card is in place.
One day -- talk about getting hopping mad -- the laptop crashed, at a gig. It simply locked up. Apparently some stupid Windows update suddenly caused the sound to quit working, and in turn locked up MIXXX. I removed the external card, and ran MIXXX long enough to reconfigure the sound back to the internal -- worked for 5 minutes and locked again. A later Windows update got the internal card working, but the external never did come back on. Meanwhile this laptop has developed other problems -- had to disable Windows 10 updates entirely just to keep it from screwing up worse.
Today -- new laptop. Working great. However, I still haven't decided whether to try it with the external card. It was great while it lasted.