Are There Too Many Audio Interfaces?

[Anderton]

Seriously...it seems like there are 415,000 different models out there. Are that many people making music with computers? Can the market really be that big, or are these companies selling only dozens of the things?

 

Inquiring minds want to know...

[Gus Lozada]

* hint hint : Think beyond the borders of the US and A.

 

The demand out of USA is HUGE and serious sales can be driven if you take proper care of all those markets. I personally make sure everything we ship out of AVID's warehouses is sold and we rarely can satisfy our customers POs.

 

Not precisely Audio Interfaces, but talking about technology, as an example, Brazil is the absolute number one customer -in the world- of the VENUE digital live consoles. And they still are the number one market to sell our audio interfaces too in Latin America.

 

Speaking of Latin America, there's another phenomenon: we are still selling PCI interfaces like crazy. Laptops are very common now in Latin America, but not the powerful, music-capable type, so the market for desktops peripherals is still huge. It has been slowing down gradually, indeed, but you just can't drop a PCI line "just because".

 

When you do such an intensive work promoting a line of products, people just feel more confident (because you offer support, website and manuals in their language, LOCAL service, replacements, repairings, etc) and then, sales just happen.

 

 

Of course, even with all that some models just born and die with no big honors, but to give you a quick answer, sensei, yes, the market is really huge.

[MikeRivers]

It's like anything else in this crazy business. There are new users entering the pool all the time, people who see a YouTube video of someone singing in his bedroom and saying "I can do that."

 

Of course they can do that, and with the audio hardware that's built into their computers. But they don't understand the system components. They have learned that they need a condenser mic (OK, no computer comes with a decent mic yet) and then they realize that the plug on the end of the cable doesn't fit their computer. Someone tells them that they need a "preamp." Then they're told that the audio interface in their computer isn't compatible with the preamp (some mumbo-jumbo about "impedance" which they don't understand) and that they should get a new "interface." And there you go.

 

Of course each generation's first-timer hardware has to be cheaper than the last generation's, and it needs some feature to get people talking about it that will distinguish it from last year's model. So any company with computer audio interfaces as a major player in their business plan needs to bring out a new model at least once a year to keep a hand in that market. There's Lynx, Metric Halo, sort of RME, that have been able to keep the same product selling for years because it's still better than the $100 interface, but generally today these are the "next" interface someone buys, not the first one.

 

Gus has a good point about the international market but there are more people buying computers who don't know how to open them up (or are hesitant to do so) so USB is surely getting stronger.

 

But, yeah, it would be much easier to tell someone what to get (or what not to get) if there were only a couple of choices in each bracket. It's not about sound any more, at least for the biggest segment of the market, it's about features they think will be cool, and functions that they think they need. And that's all about the marketing.

 

Now, do we really need all these microphones?

[Alndln2]

As FireWire seems to be fading on PC laptops, and inferior FW chipsets(Agere) replacing better previous ones(TI) on Apple, I think were going to see more and more USB interfaces. At the moment there are only a handful with quality AD/DA and drivers.

[blue2blue]

* hint hint : Think beyond the borders of the US and A . The demand out of USA is HUGE and serious sales can be driven if you take proper care of all those markets. I personally make sure everything we ship out of AVID's warehouses is sold and we rarely can satisfy our customers POs. Not precisely Audio Interfaces, but talking about technology, as an example, Brazil is the absolute number one customer -in the world- of the VENUE digital live consoles. And they still are the number one market to sell our audio interfaces too in Latin America. Speaking of Latin America, there's another phenomenon: we are still selling PCI interfaces like crazy. Laptops are very common now in Latin America, but not the powerful, music-capable type, so the market for desktops peripherals is still huge. It has been slowing down gradually, indeed, but you just can't drop a PCI line "just because". When you do such an intensive work promoting a line of products, people just feel more confident (because you offer support, website and manuals in their language, LOCAL service, replacements, repairings, etc) and then, sales just happen. Of course, even with all that some models just born and die with no big honors, but to give you a quick answer, sensei, yes, the market is really huge.

Having lived with a Firewire interface since 2004 (with really no trouble except the digital signal contamination issues presumably related to ground loop issues in cheap FW controllers like the one in my Dell laptop -- which, happily, in my case could be avoided by simply not having the laptop's own internal audio and my MOTU 828mkII hooked up to different switched inputs of the same control amp at the same time), and currently using it with a tower (into which I installed a FW expansion card with TI chips and have had no problems), the merits of PCI interfaces are more boldly obvious that ever.

 

Unfortunately, with so many recording "engineers" apparently afraid to open the case of their computers -- the market is dominated by FW and (frequently problematic) USB interfaces.

 

At this point, having read all the troubles and horror stories with various USB devices (and, of course, many FW devices), I would probably do everything I could to avoid a USB -- and maybe FW, too, since, as pointed out above, when you can even find it in a machine, it's typically an inferior, problematically chipped FW interface built in.

[TimOBrien]

Choice is never a bad thing.

 

Back in the days when we had fewer choices there were many more problems and far less chance of success....

[Jeff da Weasel]

Unfortunately, with so many recording "engineers" apparently afraid to open the case of their computers -- the market is dominated by FW and (frequently problematic) USB interfaces.

 

Keep in mind, Blue, that many engineers prefer working on laptops, like ye olde MacBook Pro I'm blathering on at this very moment. The choice of USB and FW isn't always because of a fear to crack the case.

[Geoff Grace]

Certainly, Barry Schwartz, the author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less would answer "yes;" and he makes a good case for his cause.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[Ernest Buckley]

 

Seriously...it seems like there are 415,000 different models out there. Are that many people making music with computers? Can the market really be that big, or are these companies selling only dozens of the things? Inquiring minds want to know...

 

 

I think the markets been over-saturated for years now with mics as well. Gus does make a good point about thinking beyond the US borders. However, I think there is an overall abundance of crap.

[Gus Lozada]

Certainly, Barry Schwartz, the author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less would answer "yes;" and he makes a good case for his cause. Best, Geoff

 

Oh well... having half or third of available models could make my life simpler... but then more boring

[Hard Truth]

There's a lot of them out there, but most of them seem to be pretty much the same. Last time I looked I couldn't find one with 16 simultaneous analog inputs without paying for preamps also. I had to settle for 8 analog ins and 8 ADAT ins and use my ADAT recorder to convert analog to digital.

[blue2blue]

Keep in mind, Blue, that many engineers prefer working on laptops, like ye olde MacBook Pro I'm blathering on at this very moment. The choice of USB and FW isn't always because of a fear to crack the case.

Having worked for 3 years on a laptop, I'm wondering why -- aside from field recording and other real world portability concerns -- one would prefer working on a laptop. I love my laptop and it served me well when it was actually my all 'round machine, but the compromises are many and the payoffs (aside from portability) all but nil.

 

 

But... on consideration... I'm guessing portability is pretty much the draw. So, you know... never mind.

[MikeRivers]

 

Keep in mind, Blue, that many engineers prefer working on laptops, like ye olde MacBook Pro I'm blathering on at this very moment. The choice of USB and FW isn't always because of a fear to crack the case.

 

I don't think they prefer to work on laptops, but rather that they see the combination of a laptop and an I/O box as a self-contained and portable recording system. Why take the whole dining room table when a corner of a desk will do? And you can take it on the road with you and mix your album between shows.

 

The Firewire/USB issue is kind of odd. There seems to be more trouble getting Firewire to work than USB, and I suspect that this is because the people who design the bridge chips and write the drivers (for the Firewire port itself, not the audio part) don't know or don't care that there are people who expect the port to be streaming data full time. They design that port to talk to a disk drive or a video camera.

 

The chips keep changing, and the folks who write drivers for the audio gear have a hard time keeping up. The result is that we end up with Net Wisdom that "the TI chipset" is the right one to get if you want to run audio through a Firewire port. But is that today's TI chip, or one from three years ago? There will be a difference, and it might come around to bite you on the ass. You can get ExpressCard or CardBus adapters with a TI chip, but people have trouble with those, too, I expect because of the driver for the card slot not caring about full time streaming. And many "netbooks" don't have an expansion card slot or Firewire port.

 

USB2.0 seems to be pretty much immune to port compatibility issues, but there aren't a lot of multi-channel audio interfaces that use USB2 (well not as many that use Firewire). USB2 has plenty of throughput to handle 8, or even 24 tracks at 24/96 but I've never had anything other than a 2-channel USB2 interface in my hands so I can't say how well the 8-bangers work. USB does put more of a housekeeping load on the CPU than Firewire (part of what lets it be cheaper) so you might need more horsepower for the same functional capability with a USB system than a Fireiwre one. But I haven't had the opportunity to actually quantify that. Someone else who hasn't will have a number, though. It's the Net way.

 

Then there's the cheapskate factor. USB is cheaper than Firewire because there's no license fee and less hardware, so you don't tend to see too many otherwise high quality USB audio interfaces. I'm sure the RME ones are fine, and you can't quibble about SADiE LRX (other than the part about the $8,000) but the newest multi-channel USB interfaces seem to be getting cheaper and cheaper.

 

I'm knocking on wood that my Mackie Firewire mixer I/O card and 1200F work fine with the computers I have, under Windows XP. I can keep those systems going until computer hardware is no longer compatible with XP or the my PCI bus Firewire I/O card in the desktop and CardBus adapter in the laptop.

 

With my netbook (no Firewire port nor expansion slot, but heck it only cost $200), I haven't gone beyond my Behringer UCA-200 or CEntrance MicPort Pro. Nothing very exciting there. I'd rather take along my Zoom H2 or Korg MR-1000 than carry a computer to record stereo. Most of the time I can wait until I get home to burn CDs or edit the recordings. And if not, there's always a computer to borrow just about anywhere you go these days.

[blue2blue]

 

I'm knocking on wood that my Mackie Firewire mixer I/O card and 1200F work fine with the computers I have, under Windows XP. I can keep those systems going until computer hardware is no longer compatible with XP or the my PCI bus Firewire I/O card in the desktop and CardBus adapter in the laptop.

 

 

I'm hoping the new phenom of XP being sold on new netbooks may keep that classic, happy medium OS alive for some time to come, despite MS' obvious abhorrence of the idea.

[MikeRivers]

 

I'm hoping the new phenom of XP being sold on new netbooks may keep that classic, happy medium OS alive for some time to come, despite MS' obvious abhorrence of the idea.

 

Are they still doing that? I got mine about 7-8 months ago, but now the same model from the same dealer costs about $30 more and comes with Win7 Starter. I read up on that in hopes that it might be a way to check out Win7 (no real compelling need to connect an audio interface to this computer - just had to say that for the sake of this thread) but there were several things I'm accustomed to that the Starter version won't do. Can't remember what, but I thought it was important enough to not get a computer with that version. And I'm not much of a computer geek.

[Jeff da Weasel]

But... on consideration... I'm guessing portability is pretty much the draw. So, you know... never mind.

 

 

[UltramegaOK]

As a side note to the previous side notes about FW and USB...I recently went shopping for a full laptop to replace a netbook which was underpowered for the number of MIDI / instrument tracks I was using in my songs. I wanted the new laptop to be compatible with my Presonus FW interfaces, so it needed to have a FW port. From my search, there just aren't that many brand/models of laptops coming out with FW port on board any more. The Dell Studio 15 is what I settled on an it works great. Other than Apple, Sony and HP appear to be dropping FW in anything under the 17 inch-bell-&-whistle models. Acer and Asus seem to have dropped FW in all of their newest. No FW in Samsung or Gateway, either.

 

I chatted with the inside rep at Dell and he tells me FW support is being reduced in the number of models they make because there's just a lower number of FW devices on the market and demand has dropped. I asked if there was a timeline for introduction of USB 3.0 and they know its coming soon, but could not offer a real ship date.

 

I'd like to hear more from audio device manufs. on their plans for USB 3.0.

[Gus Lozada]

Ok, USB 3.0 has a waaaaay enormous bandwidth. Ok. Maybe we can finally record 48 or 128 channels at once because of that extended bandwidth.

 

Now...

 

1) Can your laptop really handle recording 48 channels at once? Really? I mean... really?

 

2) Are we, as consumers, really anxious to buy a 48-channels interface, with 16 to 32 mic preamps? That won't be any affordable or portable.

 

3) Do we really need to record 48 channels for our projects?

 

3) Being this new, the sole "chip" to handle USB 3.0 would make the simplest interface as cheap as the most expensive FireWire model.

 

 

... I'm all for new protocols and large bandwidths but a new protocol is not the one and only answer to some "problems".

[ggm1960]

 

Are There Too Many Audio Interfaces?

 

 

Yes there are, right here in my house. Let's see my newest one is the Apogee Duet (very nice), then I've got a Presonus FirePod, Hercules 16/12 firewire (perhaps my favorite), there's the M-Audio 2496 PCI card I couldn't seem to sell on eBay and the ridiculously expensive (for it's day and ability) Yamaha SW1000XG PCI card, then of course there's the Line 6 KB37 do it all USB interface and even the Digitech GSP1101 guitar processor will take over a Windows computer and want to be the interface if you plug in the USB cable.

 

Pretty sure I still have that stupid Roland RAP-10 around here somewhere as well!

[Gus Lozada]

Yes there are, right here in my house.

 

Oh crap... if the question means "in your house"... then the answer is a really loud YES.

 

Still, I love the more small, portable ones.

The huge 8-preamp-expandable to non-sense are almost never used for personal projects; only with customers or recording on-site.

 

 

These little ones are my fave:

 

Digidesign's MBox Micro & M-Audio's Micro:

 

[UltramegaOK]

I believe the benefits of USB 3.0 will have other enhancements, such as offering bi-directional full bandwidth and no restrictions inhereted by attaching legacy devices.

 

Currently, the USB 2.0 bus depreciates to the value of the lowest connected device...meaning, it will run at 1.0 data rates for all devices if you have 1.0 device connected somewhere on the bus or chain. With USB 3.0, each device should pass data at its designed data rate 1, 2 or 3.0.

[bp]

I like MOTU's FW/USB combo idea. It's nice to be able to choose which one works best for you at a given moment.

[MikeRivers]

 

I believe the benefits of USB 3.0 will have other enhancements, such as offering bi-directional full bandwidth and no restrictions inhereted by attaching legacy devices.

 

Is the latter a promise? Is it in the specification? When I want to back up to a USB2.0 drive from Norton Ghost, I have to unplug my Steinberg USB dongle or else it reminds me that the backup will run at USB1 speed.

 

I'd wait a couple of years before I bought a USB3 audio device though. Since there isn't a Windows class compliant USB audio driver (at least not from Microsoft), like USB2, every vendor will have to write his own driver and you know how long it takes to get that right.

 

There really isn't any bandwidth problem with USB2. The problem is that the USB2 gear sells to people who only have two or three microphones, or 30 microphones but record in a 9x12 spare bedroom, so they ask "Why should I pay for 24 mic inputs?"

 

I suppose that USB3 for audio is inevitable, and I have no objection to it when it's ready, but first I'd like to see see word clock inputs and outputs, really high grade converters, meaningful metering and real zero latency analog monitoring on multi-channel interfaces.

[UltramegaOK]

 

Is the latter a promise? Is it in the specification?

 

 

It looks like it is in the specification for USB 3.0.

 

From the Wiki page on USB:

 

"The host controller directs traffic flow to devices, so no USB device can transfer any data on the bus without an explicit request from the host controller. In USB 2.0, the host controller polls the bus for traffic, usually in a round-robin fashion. The slowest device connected to a controller sets the bandwidth of the interface. For SuperSpeed USB (defined since USB 3.0), connected devices can request service from host. Because there are two separate controllers in each USB 3.0 host, USB 3.0 devices will transmit and receive at USB 3.0 data rates regardless of USB 2.0 or earlier devices connected to that host. Operating data rates for them will be set in the legacy manner."

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus

 

I am not familiar with all USB 2.0 audio devices available, but from looking around the web recently it appeared to me that the limitation for most USB 2.0 connected mixers and mic pre's is lack of support for more than a pair of output streams. ??? While these USB devices support a high number of inputs, they seem to support only two channels of output (stereo or dual mono) via USB.

 

I did not see anything like the 8-input/output FW devices (i.e. Presonus Firestudio/Firepod) that supports ALL in / ALL out. Perhaps FW has better multi-stream support than USB 2.0?

 

It looks like USB 3.0 may not only offer greater bandwidth, but the method for passing data, plus advances with host control should make it potentially better than FW for audio streaming.

[MikeRivers]

 

For SuperSpeed USB (defined since USB 3.0), connected devices can request service from host. Because there are two separate controllers in each USB 3.0 host, USB 3.0 devices will transmit and receive at USB 3.0 data rates regardless of USB 2.0 or earlier devices connected to that host. Operating data rates for them will be set in the legacy manner."

 

So there are two controllers? Well, I guess that's one way of assuring compatibility.

 

I am not familiar with all USB 2.0 audio devices available, but from looking around the web recently it appeared to me that the limitation for most USB 2.0 connected mixers and mic pre's is lack of support for more than a pair of output streams.

 

I thought TASCAM had some stuff like that, but in a few minutes looking around the net at the usual suspects, I couldn't come up with any. I suspect that the reason is that this is viewed as the "low cost" interface and people who would buy one, rather than a Firewire or PCI interface probably wouldn't know what to do with multiple outputs other than play out to surround speakers, and there are gamer sound cards that do that.

 

I ran the numbers for someone once and 24 channels in and out at 24 bits, 96 kHz sample rate was well under the maximum USB throughput speed. So I suspect that the reason there aren't more 8x8 USB audio devices is a marketing decision rather than a technical one. 8x8 Firewire interfaces aren't exactly flying off the shelves these days since so much mixing is done in the box now.