Firewire or USB?

[Analog Kid]

Inspiron E1705, E1405, E1505

All XPS series

 

I did find some that didnt have it, they seem to be based on the Pentium M and not Core Duo.

[Analog Kid]

 

Originally posted by Khazul For my main audio interface I wouldnt touch any flavour of USB with a barge pole - ts sux... Did I make that clear enough? It truly utterly sux! While USB2 and Firewire are on paper similar speeds, firewire is and USB2 are used in completely different ways for multi-channel audio - one is a free-for-all glitchy riot (usb), the other has nice neat foot-to-floor lanes (firewire).

 

 

I've no problem with my 828. If it sux so bad, why does it work so well?

[jazzwee]

 

Originally posted by Analog Kid strange. Im not a dell expert, but visiting their website, i cant seem to find a notebook that doesnt have it.

 

 

I don't know what you're looking at but I don't see it. However I can add that my notebook has TWO USB ports.

 

In any case, I don't use USB for my sound interface unless I'm connecting to my boards via MIDI. I use a PCMCIA based sound card and am planning to upgrade to another PCMCIA based interface in the future.

[Analog Kid]

 

Originally posted by Analog Kid Inspiron E1705, E1405, E1505 All XPS series I did find some that didnt have it, they seem to be based on the Pentium M and not Core Duo.

 

 

A slight clarification you might have missed. I guess Dell is picking up Firewire for their new generation, perhaps as a nod to the audio or photographic community. I have no idea if it's 6 pin or 4 pin, I really dont know jack about Dell.

[jazzwee]

 

Originally posted by Analog Kid Inspiron E1705, E1405, E1505 All XPS series I did find some that didnt have it, they seem to be based on the Pentium M and not Core Duo.

 

 

It really has nothing to do with CPU. The examples you gave are the big desktop replacement multimedia models. These are the specialized models. They don't have it on the regular notebooks. Mine is a high-end lighter weight model. The point I'm making is that Dell does not consider this a "mainstream" kind of feature which speaks to what they think about it.

[jazzwee]

You know that Sony invented firewire right? I still have my old Sony VAIO with firewire. Of course at the time, only Sony made firewire related things (Video primarily).

 

So that explains the reluctance of competitors to follow them. I don't particularly care either way, except that I don't want to have to figure out duplicate interfaces. I wish things were simpler and more standardized. They don't always have to be the greatest, but standard.

[Analog Kid]

I was under the impression that Firewire was devleoped by a group of a few companies, Sony being one. Again, i dont really know, but I do know that if you arent looking for the greatest, but standard, you've made the right choice with Dell!

 

 

 

 

heh- sorry... just in a mood today.

[jazzwee]

Ha! Firewire was invented by APPLE COMPUTER. I was wrong. But it was first used by Sony and Apple. Sorry I don't use Apple so my first exposure to it was via Sony.

[jazzwee]

By the way that Dell model you referred to has

 

SIX USB ports and 1 firewire.

 

Obviously not a regular computer. Six USB ports. I just can't get over that. I thought notebooks were supposed to be portable. With 6 USB devices attached and one firewire, I'd like to see that on somebody's lap or in use on an airplane

[Sinner6]

Just to clarify-

 

I didn't meant to imply Firewire was going away TODAY.

 

I just meant to imply that it's likely to go away sooner than USB.

Any yes my new laptop (sony) has firewire.

 

Again, I don't think either is ideal for audio due to bandwith/jitter. Not that it's that bad, but PCI/PCMCIA is still better.

 

Anywhoo...

[J3RK]

Originally posted by jazzwee By the way that Dell model you referred to has SIX USB ports and 1 firewire. Obviously not a regular computer. Six USB ports. I just can't get over that. I thought notebooks were supposed to be portable. With 6 USB devices attached and one firewire, I'd like to see that on somebody's lap or in use on an airplane

 

Well, you don't really need to have 6 wired USB devices. Maybe you have a Bluetooth adapter, a copy protection dongle or two, and maybe a little flash drive. That would still be a little bit ridiculous while on the go, but it wouldn't make the footprint that much different.

[J3RK]

 

Originally posted by Sinner6 Just to clarify- I didn't meant to imply Firewire was going away TODAY. I just meant to imply that it's likely to go away sooner than USB. Any yes my new laptop (sony) has firewire. Again, I don't think either is ideal for audio due to bandwith/jitter. Not that it's that bad, but PCI/PCMCIA is still better. Anywhoo...

 

 

I only use PCI if it's something for my studio. Firewire if it's for my laptop, purely because PCMCIA connectors are usually very thin and fragile, and can't really be replaced if a cable gets ripped out or something. I tend to avoid USB for anything but game controllers, flash drives, and other such unimportant devices.

[Sinner6]

The only PCMCIA interface I have any experience with is the EMU 1616 which uses standard CAT5 to interface with the breakout box. I would be leery of proprietary connectors.

[jazzwee]

 

Originally posted by J3RK Well, you don't really need to have 6 wired USB devices. Maybe you have a Bluetooth adapter, a copy protection dongle or two, and maybe a little flash drive. That would still be a little bit ridiculous while on the go, but it wouldn't make the footprint that much different.

 

 

Well if you saw the photo of the unit, it had 4 USBs with two in each row, side by side. And then another two on the left in vertical posiiton. Basically if you used dongles etc., it would render the the other ports unusable since there would be no space to plug anything else in. So the only logical use would be with cables. Weird to me. Particularly since you could always get a USB hub in a desktop environment.

[angstwulf]

 

Originally posted by zarquin That article seems to be mostly scare mongering, as both the macbook and the macbook pro have Firewire 400 Ports..

 

 

He made some comment about the new Macs will have a Firewire 800 port as a "concession" to video camera owners.

 

I thought that Firewire 800 is backwards compatible. If so, then what's his point?

[Khazul]

 

Originally posted by Analog Kid I've no problem with my 828. If it sux so bad, why does it work so well?

 

 

MOTU are doing USB2 audio interfaces? TBH I am really very suprised.

 

My own experience of multi channel audio on USB has allways been bad unles the host computer is under relatively low use conditions (and even with the best USB2 host end hardware I can find - usually adaptec).

 

As J33K pointed out - USB protocols are just not ideal for reliable lossless multi-channel audio operation - granted - you *can* get away with it if nothing else is using the same USB2 hardware - from the host chipset port outwards. The CPU overheads allways seem to be much higher for USB2 than firewire for any given application in my experience.

 

My firewire interface is currrently managing glitch free 24in/16 out @ 44.1K with 128 samples (approx 3ms latency) on a PC - thats with 2 devices on the bus - both of which are shunting loads of audio around.

 

TBH - there is probably no reason on this earth why USB2 cant relaibly manage this given a reasonable host computer and no hub share... but it has allways failed miserably when even *slighly* stretched.

 

USB1.1 oddly seems to manage far better within its limitations (for less bandwidth, but more reliaible with it for audio).

 

BTW - is your good experience with USB2 on a Mac or PC?

 

Its good that yours is reliable - I wouldnt steer anyone towards a USB2 based audio interface until the underlying technology correctly supports appropriate transport sematics - USB2.X maybe if such as thing is one the cards, but for now - firewire or PCI.

[XorAxAx]

Originally posted by J3RK USB is not an ideal bus for audio. ... I worked on the USB driver team at MS for a while. ... I also did a lot of audio interface testing at another large company for a popular audio recording package. The firewire interfaces almost always worked better.

Sorry, USB guys. J3RK wins the thread.

[zarquin]

does anyone have any links for some decent benchmarks?

 

im thinking that some good tests would be with the 828 usb and 828 firewire, and see how many channels you can get, along with a disk drive with both.

and also the cpu load.

 

and you'd probably want to do it cross platforms as well...

[XorAxAx]

Someone buy me a MacBook and those interfaces, and I'll do it.

[Analog Kid]

well, part of my thinking is that my main media drive needs the firewire bus. For my needs the drive bus handles a lot more data than the audio interface

Im using it with my iBook- have no trouble setting my latency to 64samples.

 

MOTU says the USB2.0 standard is plenty fast enough, for their part.

[schmod]

All else being equal (and it never is...), you will probably want to go with Firewire.

 

It is generally considered to be the more robust of the two interfaces, and is known to have lower latency than USB.

 

USB 1.1 is crap. If you're doing one or two channels, you can slip by, but I'd avoid it.

 

USB 2 has enough bandwidth to suck down quite a few audio channels, but also has a huge amount of overhead associated with it. Real-world bandwidth is going to be slightly less than Firewire 400.

 

Firewire 400 has enough bandwidth to do quite a few tracks, low latency, and a low error rate. Daisy-chaining of devices is fully supported, and works well (usually transparently). As a convenience factor, many smaller devices can power themselves off of the firewire bus, which is a great plus to people on the road, and lets you avoid having to carry around a plugpack. USB also provides power, but not as much, and the standards tend to vary from machine to machine as to how much power actually makes it to the device. I also believe that FW is the better choice if you're simultaneously doing input and output on the same device, although I have no firm data to back this up...

 

Firewire 800 is basically firewire 400 with a new connector, and double the bandwidth. It hasn't caught on mainly because there aren't many applications or devices that can actually output 400mb/sec of data, let alone 800. (a good hard drive maxes out at less than 100mb/sec). Expect to see the format take off once HD video and solid-state storage become mainstream (not for quite awhile)

 

 

In the industry (Video and Audio production), it is universally acknowledged that Firewire is the superior of the two interfaces. Doesn't matter if they're Mac or PC users. To put it in audio-geek terms, this is like debating the difference between 1/4" and XLR. Both have their applications, but in the end, XLR is far superior.

 

As for which computers include USB and which include Firewire, I'm afraid this comes down to mostly politics. Firewire is a standard that Intel has been very reluctant to adopt -- mainly because they 'missed the boat' when it was developed in favor of USB, the first incarnation of which ended up being vastly inferior to firewire (11mbps vs 400). Because of this, USB is integrated into virtually every intel chipset and motherboard, but firewire is not, and usually has to be added at extra cost by the OEM manufacturer.

 

As time goes on, more and more chipset and motherboard manufacturers are catching on to the standard, and supporting Firewire, mainly because it's not terribly expensive, and helps sell the product. Sony and Apple were the original backers behind firewire, so obviously all their products support it. Dell and other manufacturers are influenced mainly by their client-base and which parts they can get for the least amount of money. Most PC users do not have a legitimate need for Firewire, and thus it is one of the first things to get the axe when cutting costs. As digital video editing becomes more popular, Firewire is being integrated into more computers by the law of supply and demand. I don't think anyone will contest that Apple and iMovie led the pack on this one.

 

This also explains why Firewire 800 was not included on the first-generation macbook. Demand was low, and the parts were scarce.

 

 

Hope this helps.

[packrat]

 

Originally posted by Sinner6 Firewires not dead, but it's on life support. A telling indicator of this is that the standards biggest proponent (Apple) has dropped firewire support on it's best selling product the IPOD.

 

 

Mainly becasue they got sick of having to cope with USB /and/ firewire because PCs didn't consistently have firewire, or because a lot of people have cheap PCs with broken firewire.

 

USB is fine for a mouse or a keyboard, but running disks off it is just silly.

 

B>

[jazzwee]

nice explanation schmod

[packrat]

USB (1) and firewire were never competing. Intel tried to come up with an interface that would make all the old parallel PS/2 mouse/keyboard, and serial ports on PCs obsolete. Unfortunately, intel don't have a lot of clue when it comes to standards so we were stuck with USB which really doesn't work that well. This was then evolved into USB 2.0 which doesn't work a lot better, has lots of exciting chipset issues and is trumpted by ignorant PC people as being fantastic.

 

Firewire grew, at apple, into a way to get from a DV video compatible interface into a way for general high-speed hot-plug media. Perfect for video streaming, disks, audio, all sorts of things. It was never envisioned as a way to cheaply replace a serial or keyboard adaptor, so the protocol isn't dumbed down to the point of the wonderful host-centric USB.

 

B>

[Sinner6]

After reading this thread, I am convinced firewire is the superior interface for audio, if one only has the choice of USB2.0 or firewire. Interesting discussion.

 

Have any PCI Express or EXpress card interfaces come out yet?