The Universal Serial Bus. The one bus to rule them all. It brought peace and stability to the world of computer peripherals. No more would Apple and PC users have to buy their own special keyboards, mice, and printers. No more would computers sprout different ports for different types of hardware. I invented Drumbeats and Dicerolls โ a show in which I roll dice in order to write music in Ableton Live. The concept is simple enough, but on the technical side, it gets a little complicated.
Video-wise, I use two webcamsโone for me, one to film the dice as I roll them. Then I have my mouse and keyboard, both running via a single Logitech wireless dongle. Finally, I have my Steinberg UR22 audio interfaceโbasically a soundcard in an external box that has musician-friendly hookups for professional-grade mics and speakers.
Only, since my desktop was stolen , I only have a laptop to run the whole show. Trouble struck as I first attempted to stream in this way. However, the audio was problematic. Every ten to twenty seconds or so, the sound would drop out or stutter. It was incredibly jarring for a music stream.
I was frustrated. And yet, here I stood. At first, I figured I just had to tweak my software setup. I figured if I just used the professional-grade ASIO sound driver instead, my stuttering problem would go away. I tried a test recording offline, and it all worked great. No stutters, no problems. Only, as soon as I tried streaming liveโฆ the stuttering was back, in a big way. For my second stream, I switched things up. This worked great, with no stuttering on playback. But I had a new problemโonly one of my webcams would work at a time.
Oh, and the mic feed from the Steinberg was dropping out randomly, ruining my vocal recordings. Looking at the mess of cables and daisy-chained hubs in front of me, I realized I had to simplify. I eliminated any extra hubs, ditched the USB headset, and had the most critical deviceโthe Steinbergโconnected by a single cable.
