{"id":25044,"date":"2022-01-05T18:30:44","date_gmt":"2022-01-06T02:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/?p=25044"},"modified":"2022-01-09T15:24:30","modified_gmt":"2022-01-09T23:24:30","slug":"owc-thunderbolt-hub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/owc-thunderbolt-hub\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wonder of Thunderbolt Hubbing with the OWC Thunderbolt Hub"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"OWC
OWC Thunderbolt Hub<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/a>One of the great joys of the USB-C life has been the proliferation of USB-C docks that are cross platform for Mac and PC. Over the years I\u2019ve tested a lot of them, settling on the CalDigit TS3+ dock as my favorite.<\/p>\n

I did a full review of the CalDigit TS3+ three years ago<\/a> and I still love it to pieces. This sweet little paperback-book-sized dock has 5 USB-A ports, 2 USB-C ports, 2 Thunderbolt ports, DisplayPort, Digital Optical, Gigabit Ethernet and audio in\/out.<\/p>\n

With 2 Thunderbolt ports on the CalDigit dock, you can plug in a Thunderbolt display like the 5K or the Pro Display XDR, and also plug in a Mac and get both power to the Mac and video out to the display. Add in other USB devices and some speakers and you\u2019ve got everything with just a single Thunderbolt cable to the Mac.<\/p>\n

At this point in my story, I\u2019ve given you a scenario a relatively normal nerd might set up for themselves. I\u2019m going to diverge into more complexity that has very little chance of relevance to anyone listening or reading. How\u2019s that for a hook to persuade you not to jump to the next chapter?<\/p>\n

This setup worked pretty swell for me until I decided to upgrade from a USB mic interface to the Universal Audio Apollo Solo Thunderbolt 3 mic interface. A mic interface allows you to use a big-girl mic with an XLR connector on it, and yet plug it directly into your Mac or PC.<\/p>\n

I switched to a Thunderbolt interface to solve a big problem I was having.<\/p>\n

The big problem is that USB wasn\u2019t able to keep up with the load when I was recording video tutorials for ScreenCastsOnline. I\u2019d get these little clicks and pops from time to time. It was super<\/em> tedious to have to rerecord my voice.<\/p>\n

Giving up USB and going to Thunderbolt has a beautiful side effect too. The only way to be truly sure you\u2019ve got clean audio is to monitor your own voice. This drives some people bananas because USB introduces a slight delay. With a Thunderbolt interface, you can get very close to zero latency so you can monitor without losing your mind.<\/p>\n

\u2028It turns out that there are a lot of USB interfaces, a limited choice of Thunderbolt 2 interfaces, and exactly one Thunderbolt 3 interface that fits my requirements. There are lots of huge ones with 8 mic inputs and such, but I really only needed one mic input since it\u2019s just little old me, and I didn\u2019t want to have to sell a kidney for it either.<\/p>\n

The one option is the $600 Universal Audio Apollo Solo with two XLR mic input<\/a>s. I talked and wrote about it back when I got it in late August.<\/p>\n

There are a few issues with the Apollo Solo, and one of them is that it absolutely positively has to be plugged directly into the Thunderbolt port on the Mac. I know, you\u2019re crying with me that I have to live with the agony of plugging in two<\/em> cables. But hey, when you\u2019ve lived the one cable life, having a two is a very sad thing.<\/p>\n

With the advent of macOS Big Sur, Apple unlocked some capability in Thunderbolt 3 (now Thunderbolt\/USB 4). The change allowed Thunderbolt devices to go through a hub, just like you can with USB devices. A Thunderbolt hub might be the solution to allowing me to go back to a one-cable life.<\/p>\n

For Christmas, Santa brought me the OWC Thunderbolt Hub, which runs a rather modest $179 US<\/a>. This hub connects to your computer via Thunderbolt 4 on the front and expands to three Thunderbolt 4 ports on the back. As an added bonus they threw a 10Gb\/s USB-A 3.2 port on the front.<\/p>\n

Adding the OWC Thunderbolt Hub to your Mac is essentially adding two extra Thunderbolt ports. I said this story wasn\u2019t relevant to most people, but if you\u2019ve got an M1 Mac with only 2 Thunderbolt ports, the hub might actually be pretty helpful to you.<\/p>\n

Now for me, the problem wasn\u2019t that I didn\u2019t have enough Thunderbolt ports, but rather I only wanted to use one port on my Mac when at my desk. I wasn\u2019t sure the OWC Thunderbolt Hub would solve my problem, and it took some diagramming to figure out whether it could do what I needed.<\/p>\n

I opened up my trusty, free diagramming tool Diagrams.net<\/a> and got to work. My requirements were to connect:<\/p>\n