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Thunderbolt I/O technology gives you two channels on the same connector with 10 Gbps of throughput in both directions. That makes Thunderbolt ultrafast and ultraflexible. You can move data to and from peripherals up to 20 times faster than with USB 2.0 and up to 12 times faster than with FireWire 800. You also have more than enough bandwidth to daisy-chain multiple high-speed devices without using a hub or switch. For example, you can connect several high-performance external disks, a video capture device, and even a display to a single Thunderbolt chain while maintaining maximum throughput.

Those are some pretty huge numbers, but what does it mean for audio? Anyone know of any thunderbolt interfaces in the works? Integrative synths like the TI utilizing this? Couple this with SSD technology and it seems we've virtually eliminated latency from the world of digital audio. I'm old enough to remember looking up porn on a 28k dial up modem so these major advances in technology are really exciting for me.

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Originally posted by meriter Those are some pretty huge numbers, but what does it mean for audio? Anyone know of any thunderbolt interfaces in the works? Integrative synths like the TI utilizing this? Couple this with SSD technology and it seems we've virtually eliminated latency from the world of digital audio. I'm old enough to remember looking up porn on a 28k dial up modem so these major advances in technology are really exciting for me.

Have a look at this thread. Thunderbolt is not optical (yet) but it has some of the info.

http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...ght=thunderbolt

It looks like RME, Motu, Universal Audio and Apogee are all scrambling to be the first to put out interfaces that works with TB.

It won't "change" much per say, but what it will allow is more options - even 6/7 years ago, doing a project with 16 tracks of 24/96 would bring your setup to a grinding halt (unless it was PTHD). Now with processor speeds higher and with more cores, SSD's becoming prevalent they needed an interface protocol that could deal with those speeds. At the moment most new computers have SATA 3 busses for the drives resulting in 6gb/s so thunderbolt has the capabilty to handle even more data transfer than that.

not to mention (as said in the other thread) it's scalable (unlike the previous connection standards such as USB or FW etc) so when they want to take it to 100mb/s they don't have to introduce a whole new standard and set of cables/devices.

IMO, it's like any of the other changes in speed/RAM/moores law/etc - it doesn't make massive changes in how we work - audio is still recorded on to drives, we still use midi devices to control software, drives to store data on etc, but it does increase workflow and makes, what were previously unobtainable professional quality setup, accessible to anyone with even a limited budget.

I was speaking to one of my conmposer friends, who happens to be the only engineer I've ever known to switch and make it as a hollywood compsoer - he was telling me how only aout 15 years ago he used to edit audiofiles with a roll of tape and a really sharp blade.

Will this technology make better music...well, we all know the answer to that one