[LAU] OT: external sound for linux card advice

[Lorenzo]

Hi Arnold, all,

Thanks for the clarifications and feedback.

Now I also have an offer for an echo audiofire 12 bigger and a bit more 
expensive but I've heard very good praises for it's audio quality (and 
it's got 12 in/outs). And, of course, it's listed "full support" on the 
ffado site.

Any opinions? The guy says he's got another offer so I'm kinda in a hurry :)

Thanks,
Lorenzo.


Arnold Krille wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Saturday 04 September 2010 19:36:06 Jeremy Jongepier wrote:
>    
>> On 09/04/2010 05:06 PM, Bernardo Barros wrote:
>>      
>>> FireWire for Laptop (thinkpad). At least 4 output channels, 8 is
>>> better with a very decent audio quality. :-)
>>> Possible to have this hardware robust and trustful to perform live?
>>>        
>> Then maybe a Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 might be an option, don't know how
>> many output channels that one has, I think it has 8.
>>      
> Pro24 has 8 outputs, 6 analog and 2 spdif.
>
>    
>> I'm testing its
>> bigger brother, the 40, and so far it performs well. But then we're
>> talking about a quadcore CPU with hyperthreading on a desktop machine.
>> Don't know how it will perform on a notebook.
>>      
> It performs well here on a 4year old turion64. Does that count?
>
>    
>> When it comes to using it live, don't know, the 'problem' with FireWire
>> devices and JACK (at least JACK1, don't know about JACK2) is that if you
>> run into xruns those could take JACK down completely resulting in a mute
>> machine. I have the feeling this happens less with USB, USB just keeps
>> going. So for live performances maybe an USB sound card might be a
>> better option.
>>      
> The problem  with usb is that its totally nondeterministic. One time you have
> the bandwidth and the low latency, the next time you don't have it. And by
> next time I don't mean the next time you plug it in but the next time a packet
> is sent!
> If you think, firewire is bad for audio, usb is far worse! And firewire is
> actually pretty cool for audio. Only better ways of transporting digital audio
> are ADAT, AES and the likes...
>
> And jack2 handles xruns (no matter if its xruns of hardware or software) far
> eaiser because os its internal structure.
>
> Have fun,
>
> Arnold
>    
>
>
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