Reading audio from a usb synth

Question

I would like to experiment with real time audio and was wondering what options are there for accessing audio via a usb port?

I would like to get data from this hardware in an audio stream.

Is this sort of thing best handled by audio frameworks or should the data be fetched using IOKit and passed to e.g. an audio component using a framework?

Also, how is this access effected if e.g. A DAW is accessing the audio from the port? Is dual access handled by the OS?

Answer 1

The specs page for that hardware (Moog Minitaur) doesn't claim that it can transmit audio over USB, only that it has USB MIDI- essentially it has a built in MIDI interface.

If you wanted to get audio from it into your computer you would have to connect it to your computer's line or mic input, or an external soundcard - which may itself connect via USB. One way to handle audio in OSX would be Core Audio. You shouldn't need to write any drivers or anything to deal with the low-level I/O with the soundcard, as the soundcard should come with a driver if there isn't one already in the OS.