With only 2 USB ports on the 13″ and 15″ MB and MBP, Apple have shuffled around USB users on its internal USB hub scheme over the years. And we know that when the latency is too high, our actions become noticeably out of sync with the audio. When audio drop outs occur, often our only remedy is to increase latency.

If we want to have a high sample rate working at a low latency, the port needs be reading and writing quickly. How does this affect you? The ability for a port to receive and transmit at specified rates affects our audio settings. For example, the Numark Omni will only provide 4 channel output if it detects a USB 2.0 connection, defaulting to 2 channels if it detects anything lower. Most high end sound cards require USB 2.0 to even operate, with some cards even have multiple configurations. New evidence is showing, that especially with the new i5 and i7 models, you might be missing out on performance by choosing the wrong port.Īs digital audio performance increases, with higher sampling rates and greater bit depth, the speed of our USB port becomes more significant.

For MacBook and MacBook Pro users, the choice of which of the two available USB ports to use for your sound card hook-up may have never occurred to you. An audio issue is every DJ’s worst nightmare, after all audio is our art! For digital DJs, there are two sets of audio to worry about: analogue and digital, with USB being the most popular means for our digital hook-up.

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