Can I damage my sound card by connecting both to USB and FireWire

Question

I bought Behringer audio device (FCA610) and I would like it to only be turned on whether the computer is turned on as well.

There are two ways to power on the device: either via FireWire or an external adapter. My FireWire port would only power the device while computer is turned on, but I had problems making my Ubuntu also use it for transferring audio.

Because of that, I connected my sound card to both FireWire and USB and have concerns about whether there is any chance I could end up damaging the device in the long run. How likely is it that connecting it via both input modes is something the designers hadn't thought of and the device would break over time? (I already tested that this setup doesn't break immediately).

Answer 1

How likely it is that the designers hadn't thought of this is a generally a function of how cheap the device is. THe lower the cost, the more likely they didn't think about it. There is no way to know for certain without looking at schematics to know for certain if it could be damaged by being used this way, but given that it worked without issue the first time, I would say you're probably reasonably safe.

The only thing I would look out for is if you see one or two sound cards when it's connected like this. If you see only one, then you're probably fine, but if you see two, that means the device isn't smart enough to properly disable one of its interfaces when the other is being used, which in turn opens up the possibility that two different things will try to use the hardware at the same time (one through each interface), and it probably wasn't designed to handle that.

Answer 2

If in the documentation this method is not specified (like mentioned in the previous post), its better if you find another way to power it (why not a phone charger, its the same as the USB?). Your sound card should be able to provide about "2.5W" of power, your USB can provide about "5W".

Why do you want it to be powered only when the computer is ON?