superczar said:
Disagree with the analogy there
pops/clicks will happen if you do something that would disrupt the data flow via the usb port (e.g the rdp disruption I talked abt in my example)
If you use any flavour Windows, you don't really need to do anything. Switching power states (happens all the time) is enough to upset sync balance on USB. What do you think happens when Windows writes to the swap file? Unless you switch off file swapping and use the PC in 'Standard PC' HAL, you will have the risk of these issues. And even then you're not 100% sure of the results. Linux is safer, though, and support for at least m-audio products on Linux is quite good.
Not that PCI is immune either, mind you, but it recovers more gracefully, with very little chance of total loss of sync.
the cleanest of PSUs can's prevent noise pickup by the analog cicrcuit etchings on the board in a pci card
and any amount of modding in a PCI card cannot help with that
If you ever closely inspected a professional audio card, you would understand why this is totally not true.
These things are built to record the music you listen to, while inside the PC case, and use multiple ground and power planes to avoid the very interference you're talking about. Though my Delta66 has only one plane, the 1212 has 4 (yes, 4) planes - a digital ground, analog ground, positive and negative supplies. The guys who built these things knew the environment they would be in, and the results show. With an X-fi or SB Live, it's possible they would pick up a little more noise.
As for interference 'in the air', it's possible that if you had a horribly designed motherboard it would be dumping a lot of noise back into the power lines or the ether. But a decent motherboard will not - as long the devices are carefully chosen and properly implemented, you'll be fine. At one time all pro cards were specified only for Intel chipset motherboards, and there was a reason for that.
Components are quite resilient to the antennae effect, specially the SMD types have little/no inductance due to the absence of leads. The only problem is if you live near a transformer or have an electrically noisy environment, then there is little anyone can do. I have a noisy cellphone issue (not mine, my neighbor's) that affects my TV, and only heavy shielding of speaker cables mitigated (but has not totally solved) the issue of my main rig. USB is not immune to this kind of interference.
However if you are plagued with antennae problem because of a poor mobo or supply (though a supply cannot cause these kind of problems), a homemade shield of aluminum foil and transparency sheets does just fine to filter out all buzz. Old Coke cans work just as well, and there may be a hundred other similar ideas.
The only reason to put a converter outside the case is line noise, the cable length allowing decoupling from supply noise. This is the one thing USB has got going for it, which is also avoided by judicious choice of PSU and motherboard in a PCI-based system. It is assumed that if you're buying a pro-level component, you would choose a configuration that would serve the whole objective well. You can't buy a very expensive card and dump it into an el-cheapo system. Just doesn't work.
In any case a good PSU will yield a fully black background. I think the TS has enough information to make a choice. Almost anything will work fine, I find that the ultimate sound quality of a good PCI solution will be far better than USB. Think about it, you get PCI solutions till $2000, whereas USB devices stop at 500 dollars. There's a reason why.
However at 200 dollars or less, either works fine.
hyeah: 
