Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote: RME has some interesting information on its page "FireWire Audio by RME - Technical Background " http://www.rme-audio.de/english/techinfo/firewire_background.htm I quote one section below and have added some URLs. Maybe some of these companies can be convinced to create or support Open Source Linux drivers? (A task for the Linux Audio Consortium!) BridgeCo: used by M-Audio, Terratec, ESI, Edirol, Presonus, Apogee, Tascam. http://www.bridgeco.net/products/dm1000/dm1000.shtml http://www.bridgeco.net/products/dm1000e/dm1000e.shtml http://www.bridgeco.net/products/bebob/bebob.shtml Philips AV LLC: used by Motu Might be this one: http://www.semiconductors.philips.com/pip/PDI1394L40.html Upcoming: a new chip from Texas Instruments, co-developed or supported by Echo. Will be used in upcoming Echo and Mackie FireWire devices. ? Upcoming: a new chip from TC, called Dice II. A few years ago TC have bought a company that produced non-audio FireWire chips. Now this chip, announced to be available more than a year ago, is said to finally arrive. If so, it will be used in upcoming TC FireWire audio interfaces for sure. http://www.tctechnologies.tc/products.htm Upcoming: a chip from Oxford Semiconductors called OXFW970. Seems that this is the chip used in Apple's just announced 'GarageBand' FW interface. It is said to be very cheap and might cause another flood of very cheap FW audio interfaces in 2005. http://www.oxsemi.co.uk/download/standard/dsheets/oxfw970ds.pdf http://www.oxsemi.co.uk/pages/webflyers/970webflyer.pdf http://www.oxsemi.co.uk/pages/webflyers/970webflyer.pdf Cheers, Andreas