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Griffin's Problems with Truthful Labeling
I’m just a little angry at Griffin Technology today. A while back, I picked up one of their products called a USB-Audio Hub. From the title, and from a look at the product, I thought it was a 4-port USB hub integrated with their iMic product. In fact, the unit has LEDs on the front that can easily be mistaken for mini audio jacks. Such is not the case—it’s just a 4-port hub. Nothing more. They claim that its “optimized for Audio” but I see nothing to support that its any better than any other hub for audio.
Posted by windley on April 15, 2005 10:05 AM
Comment from AJ Kandy at April 15, 2005 10:48 AM
The title of the product is bad, yes. I wouldn't call it misleading, though. If it really was a USB audio interface as well as hub, they'd probably put "interface" in the title. I don't see anything in their online product description that suggests it *does* audio, merely that it "works great WITH the iMic". But that's really an issue for Griffin's marketing dept.
As someone with a Mac-based home studio, I can indeed testify that many USB hubs do not handle the USB Audio spec properly. That is to say, they don't prioritize audio over other data, they drop connections to audio devices, etc. This happened with an older Belkin hub -- I ended up having to plug my USB audio devices directly into the Mac (on separate buses) to get acceptable performance. This was a generation or so ago, though. Today, I'd probably skip USB altogether and go with FireWire, which has more bandwidth and is much more flexible.