Firewire or USB?

What's the scoop on using firewire or USB for audio/MIDI interfaces? Would firewire have lower latency than USB (on the same PC)?

I have a Tascam US-122 currently. Just curious what the benefits of switching to firewire might be.

In my view, firewire is the most likely to be "phased out" sooner rather than later. USB 2.0 is just as fast, everywhere, and compatible with everything.

Not sure about latency, but again, is latency really an issue with USB 2.0?

But what do I know, my audio interfaces have all run straight off the PCI/PCMCIA bus.

The answer partly depends on which USB spec to which you are referring:

-- USB 1.1 (slowest)

-- USB 2.0 (faster)

-- FW400 (similar to USB 2.0)

-- FW800 (there are few audio interfaces that use this, but there are FW800 external hard drives).

The other part of the answer depends on how many ports of what type you have on your computer and how you plan to use them.

Just FYI, a PCI card (internal card) will normally be faster/support more simultaneous audio connections than USB 2.0 or FireWire.

theres no real adventage

driver quality and compitiblity is what u should be concerend

theres no pont to go firewire if you have a crappy firewire controler or not competible with ur interface

theres no adventage if your only using 2in 2outs

the latency really depends on the driver and the hardware design

bad driver will coz pop and click and more CPU usage. and in general, USB/firewire uses more CPU than PCI based cards

Yeah, I was referring to USB2.0.

As for IO, using the US-122 as an example, I only really need 2 in/2 out.

I'm looking to pick up a laptop soon....something around a P4 2ghz, and if there is a firewire port, wasn't sure if it would be better to use that over the USB. I guess one benefit is that there are less peripherals viaing for the firewire, whereas the USB may be used with external keyboard, mouse, etc.

I guess PCMCIA would also be an option.

USB 2.0 clocks at 400 mbps and IEEE 1394 clocks at 480 mbps if I am not mistaken.

RME Fireface 800

http://www.rme-audio.com/english/firewire/ff800.htm

Originally posted by sonik777 RME Fireface 800 http://www.rme-audio.com/english/firewire/ff800.htm

Thanks. I did not know that anyone had taken advantage of FW800.

A closer look at the spec to see just how much of that bandwidth is available to a single device and how much you lose in protocol crap might give you more realistic figures.

B>

An odd comment considering that firewire is turning up as standard on all but the lowest-end PCs now.

B>

One IMPORTANT difference - if you're looking to do any multitrack recording - I found this out because I'm doing the same research.

Firewire mixers, and they're only available in the 400 flavor, will record MULTITRACK - as many channels that you are using.

USB mixers, and I've only found v1.1 models out there, only record 2 TRACKS - left and right. NO MULTITRACK RECORDING on a USB interface.

Because of this, USB mixers are generally cheaper. Firewire interfaces are also available on some of the upper end boards.

Please, somebody prove me wrong. I'm disappointed that these electronics manufacturers aren't keeping up with the technology.

On the other hand, there are plenty of midi USB 2.0 interfaces that work great. I've got a simple midisport 2x2 that will record as many tracks as I can send it simultaneously, with very little latency.

Ok, you're wrong. Already mentioned is the RME unit using a Firewire800 interface, and my USB based MOTU 828mkII can zip-zap on all input and output channels (22 each way) at the same time.

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.

Thank you. I stand corrected. I'm going to check it out. I'm here to learn!

That MOTU is WAY cool. I haven't found anything as advanced as that from Mackie or Alesis or Behringer or Yamaha or anyone else. Thanks for the post!

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

I really can't see firewire disapearing anytime soon either, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, there is a large amount of money invested in firewire drives, firewire cameras and audio interfaces.

i was going to say secondly, firewire is a better interface.. which i think it is, however, its not actually that much faster than USB2.0 for copying files...

have a look at

this page here with some limited benchmarks

It would be interesting to see some more benchmarking, as well as some audio based testing..

(ie highest clockrate, and bit depth ) and see how many channels they can do before they start putting pops etc in the audio...

*edit*

there is some more info here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usb#USB_2.0_Hi-Speed_vs_FireWire

that is kinda intersting...

This all relates to midi of course....

I'd be more concerned with jitter than latency. You can easily adjust for a constant latency (hardware keyboards have basically a constant latency), you can't adjust for a latency that varies all over the place.

Jitter with USB is generally worse than an old serial interface, anywhere from 2 to 15ms depending on device quality and drivers. So if you have a constant latency created by the device of 5ms your real latency at any given time could be anywhere from 7 to 20ms going through usb.

I'm not sure how bad firewire's jitter is. Of course it also depends on the quality of the device and how many devices you have on a usb chain.

Usb is definately hands down more common and it seems to be easier and less costly to build with compared to firewire.

Personally I'm not a big fan of anything that is driven by Apple, that company should have died out years ago but is kept alive by marketting and users scared of PC's. In this day and age there is no reason to go Apple and about a billion reasons not to.

Audio latency is a whole 'nother issue. Every AD/DA conversion introduces audio latency, how far away your monitors are introduces audio latency, what kind of processing and if your DAW can adjust for latency in VST's, etc. can create audio latency, if your monitoring through your DAW vs. not has a big impact on audio latency..... Last thing I'd be worried about with audio latency is firewire vs. usb. That decision should be made on what your computer supports and what features the device has that you may or may not need.

There are MANY advantages to firewire when it comes to audio, and I doubt very highly it will be phased out any time soon. USB is not an ideal bus for audio. There are 4 USB modes, none of which fit audio perfectly. There are two low speed control modes (for things like input devices.) There are two high speed modes. One is bulk transfer. This is used for things like hard drives where timing isn't critical, but data accuracy is. Then there is Isochronous mode, where timing is important, often at the expense of some dropped packets. This mode would be a fairly close fit for audio, but obviously you don't want your audio packets getting dropped. I think this mode was designed for things like web-cams, gaming audio (where you won't notice if you miss a bit or three.) I've seen some interfaces that worked fairly well on USB, but none of them totally met my expectations. Firewire is full duplex, which means it can tranfer data at both ways simultaneously. You aren't going to experience dropped packets, and your timing is going to be much more accurate. That's why companies like MOTU, RME, etc. tend to use this bus more. It's better. I know a lot more about the USB bus than I do about firewire, (I worked on the USB driver team at MS for a while.) I don't have as much data on 1394, but these devices were tested in the same lab, so I had plenty of exposure to them. 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. Fewer glitches, timing errors, etc. That's not to say that there aren't bad firewire interfaces or good USB interfaces because both exist. In general though I would only recommend 1394 or PCI when it comes to audio interfaces. (If your work is important.) If you're just a hobbiest, and don't have a 1394 port, and don't really care all that much, then there are some decent USB options. Just my opinion (reinforced with a little hands on testing data.)

you're such a genius.

Dell Computers, one of the largest laptop makers, still does not include firewire support.

I'd have to get a PCMCIA Firewire card.

It's interesting because if the trend was so much on the upswing, you'd think that Dell would jump on the firewire bandwagon. But firewire is more a Sony push anyway.

the nice Dell notebooks have Firewire.

hmmm. I wasn't aware that my notebook was not a "nice" dell

I even checked out the NEWEST model and it still did not have firewire.

FYI - I have a 600M. Maybe you're referring to those big bulky desktop replacement models? In any case, it is an acknowledgement by Dell that it is a specialty item.

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

For my main audio interface I wouldnt touch any flavour of USB with a barge pole for glitch free pro-audio use - it 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).