ESI Maya 44 USB+

I have an old Delta 101LT internal sound card which has quite a lot of noise from the computer. I was hoping to get a more silent sound card by using a USB one, that sits away from all the internal RF of the computer.

But it turns out this is in fact much more noisy than the Delta 1010LT. I didn't measure it exactly, but the noise level was at least the double, ie 6db more. The internal sound card has "scratches and pops" clearly coming from the computer, while the Maya 44 USB+ has a white/pink noise hiss, so the hiss clearly comes from the analog circuitry in the USB box.

Also the installation of the control panel didn't work for me, but you can use it anyway, just not change things as latency, etc. Had it been less noisy I would have spent more time trying to fix that.

Positives: Cheap, build quality seems fine, it feels solid, ESB's website is good and has manuals and drivers.

This can work for applications where the noise isn't a big problem, such as transferring demos from old 4-track cassette recorders etc, or live recordings, but I wouldn't recommend it for a home studio.