As I am still on the hunt for an external sound card for my Laptop, and need a pcmcia card (for USB 2.0 or Firewire..and maybe both now.. ), was wondering what people think of this unit....The Audiophile Firewire....I like the fact that it has 2 stereo outputs (4ch analog out), for when I want to mix with the laptop....but then I heard stuff about firewire...being that the connection isn't that stable in keeping a high bandwidth stream (I just read somewhere), but then again there are not really that much usb 2.0 sound cards....so any input on this card would be cool...and also the BIG argument over USB 2.0 vs Firewire...the facts I found is that USB 2.0 is a faster connection, but Firewire (1394) was built around streaming video and audio........
I dunno where you read that firewire couldn't keep a high bandwidth stream going, but you read 100% bullshit.
IMO firewire will be the future of all music production/live sound.
Nov-28-2004 07:51
T-Soma
The Sky Was Pink...
Registered: Oct 2004
Location: Chair
quote:
Originally posted by djkoolaide
I dunno where you read that firewire couldn't keep a high bandwidth stream going, but you read 100% bullshit.
IMO firewire will be the future of all music production/live sound.
I totaly agree because firewire is one of the fastest ways of connecting digital hardware... who ever said firewire could not keep a stream going smoothly knows nothing about this subject...
Originally posted by DJ 00 Tommy
I totaly agree because firewire is one of the fastest ways of connecting digital hardware... who ever said firewire could not keep a stream going smoothly knows nothing about this subject...
Ya, Firewire was designed to stream data. USB is the one that was not originally designed to do that.
Edit: Also I think firewire can be faster than USB 2.0. Firewire 800 is 800Mbit/s while USB 2.0 is 450Mbit/s (making it faster than Firewire 400 @ 400Mbit/s). A cool thing about Firewire is that the individual devices communicate with themselves and do not require the controller to control the data transfer.
___________________
"You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are." - Colonel Adolphus Busch
here's a link that I got from some other board, I will be honest that I didn't read it all through, but look at what he says near the end (Summary of Lessons learned). Even though that this is only one person's point of view.....it still has some effect on my judgment of what to pick....since I just started researching in getting a multichannel sound card for my laptop...with a coxial digital input (so I can record my mixes with my Denon 1500 in digital)...
there were some othe links about problems with firewire...but i can't find them, when I do I will post.....but keep in mind...there are more positive things than negative about firewire....so my choices so far have been narrowed down to (so far ):
I have two theories after skimming the meat of his article. The fact that it is over a year old when Firewire was newish to the PC world may have increased his driver problems. It seems like he was having lots of trouble with his particular controller (but I did not read the entire thing to be sure).
At first I was going to give this site more weight to the argument necasue he was building a DAW and not just PC Magazine testing harddrive speeds. However he is using a firewire harddrive (not audio interface), I have read numerous reports from more "standard" websites and magazines which consistantly rate real world Firewire performance over USB 2.0. The fact that this guy is doing his shopping at Best Buy and CompUSA does not instill much confidence in his computer building knowlege.
With that said, I have a PC with both USB 2.0 ports and a Firewire port and I am not particularly attached to either side, just from my what I have read it seems that the higher bandwidth USB 2.0 offers does not make up for the extra overhead it needs and therefore is usually slower than Firewire (even the 400 version).
___________________
"You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are." - Colonel Adolphus Busch
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: from New Jersey, in NEW YORK CITY
lol....
Fact: Firewire is faster and more stable than USB
end of story...
Nov-28-2004 09:00
Keith Chambers
Senior tranceaddict
Registered: Dec 2003
Location: Seattle
Firewire was invented by Apple but now it's a IEEE-1394 standard. USB was designed by Intel, much like PCI, to standardize the computing platforms, and reduce/eliminate any hardware conflicts from the 10,000 vendors all making their own little device.
Most people don't realize that the best standards based protocols often start out as proprietary. When things start out with multiple parties you get the lowest common denominator. Basically this works out to be what everybody can support with the least amount of product change, not that best possible solution. I think USB falls in to the camp.
Now that it had relatively wide adoption of Firewire in the PCs and the chip sets have been fully commoditized I'd be surprised to see it not work correctly.
I'd go with Firewire.
Keith
Nov-28-2004 09:18
skip
a.k.a. skip2
Registered: Sep 2002
Location: home or somewhere else
quote:
Originally posted by Dj Ricky H
Terratec Phase 26 USB
M-Audio Audiophile Firewire
if i were you, i'd go with the M-Audio Audiophile Firewire, because
a) firewire > usb
b) terratec is crap! i've had nothing but difficulties with their producs and their customer service is so fucking bad. they don't even read the mails i think, just send replies automatically based on keywords it seems
b) terratec is crap! i've had nothing but difficulties with their producs and their customer service is so fucking bad. they don't even read the mails i think, just send replies automatically based on keywords it seems
Don't generalise based on your personal experiences, please.
I don't see why it wouldn't be. It would be just like adding a firewire PCI card into a desktop computer (which, from my experiences, has always worked perfectly). Haven't tested it with anything audio-related though.
), was wondering what people think of this unit....The Audiophile Firewire....I like the fact that it has 2 stereo outputs (4ch analog out), for when I want to mix with the laptop....but then I heard stuff about firewire...being that the connection isn't that stable in keeping a high bandwidth stream (I just read somewhere), but then again there are not really that much usb 2.0 sound cards....so any input on this card would be cool...and also the BIG argument over USB 2.0 vs Firewire...the facts I found is that USB 2.0 is a faster connection, but Firewire (1394) was built around streaming video and audio........
