I have a Pioneer DJM-900NXS2 mixer. It has the capability of sending audio out via a USB port. On my 64bit windows 10 laptop I just can not get Audacity to record from the USB. From what I have read it’s either the lack of a 64bit driver for the device, or Audacity not being able to use the ASIO driver. I’ve spent many hours trying to figure it out, but my lack of tech knowledge is probably preventing me from finding a solution. Any tips would be great here too.
But to the point. I have a Behringer uca202 which I can use on the mixer’s RCA record output. My question is am I losing a lot of sound quality by going through a digital-analog-digital conversion VS coming straight from the mixer to the laptop via a usb output and staying digital the whole time?
“straight out of the mixer as digital” doesn’t really make a difference in terms of sound quality. You are going into the mixer as analog, so there must be a conversion from analog to digital somewhere. Coming out of the mixer as digital just means that you’re using a converter that is inside the mixer case, rather than in a separate box.
The main thing that you lose by using the UCA-202 is that you only get a 2 channel stereo mix rather than 4 channels from the mixer’s built-in converter. The sound quality is likely to be very similar.
Thank you for your reply. I will use the uca202 until I can figure out a way to use the USB out.
You answered my question perfectly, so this is more just for reference and I should have put it in the original post. I have two CDJs attached to the mixer via a coax digital cable. So the signal is all digital till it hits the record out, which is then turned straight back to digital with the uca202.
The Behringer UCA202 is a USB 1.1 audio device. That driver is still present in Win 10.
The Pioneer is a USB2 audio device. MS decided not to include that driver in Win 10, probably because the USB2 Audio class compliant standard is a bit of a mess.
Audacity doesn’t do ASIO out of the box, because of licensing.
Solutions:
You could compile Audacity with ASIO support yourself, if you know how to compile.
Use the Behringer. Loss of quality should be next to zero.
Use Windows 7 or 8, Linux, BSD or Mac, with the included USB2 audio driver included.
Use another software that is ASIO aware to record.
Contact Ploytec GMBH to see if their USB2 Audio class driver (60 €, free test) works with the Pioneer.