27 Feb
2003
27 Feb
'03
8:08 a.m.
Patrick Shirkey wrote:
Umm, I've been shopping for an audio interface for a laptop I hope to
purchase within the next few months. USB audio devices start around
$200 US. I haven't seen FireWire for under $500 US. If anyone knows of
a cheaper FireWire card, I need to know about it.
you need to understand that this state of affairs is caused by
misleading advertising and marketing. firewire cards cost $50 and can
handle about 100 channels of decent quality audio. but ... there is no
widely used protocol for handling audio distribution and connection
management over IEEE1394.
as a result, the "firewire" cards you are seeing are actually
proprietary uses of an extraordinarily cheap technology. the MOTU
stuff is one example, the RME HDSP series is another. there is no deep
technical reason why these devices could not have been implemented as
external devices that send data to a generic 1394 card, handled by a
generic 1394/audio driver. but this would require an agreed upon
protocol, and would make it clear that the cost of these devices is
too high by a factor of 2-5. consequently, we are currently stuck with
these so-called "firewire" interfaces in which the fact that they use
1394 is about as relevant as the color of the packing they use.
--p
yes, you
can move audio over USB. the question is not whether you can,
but whether you should, and my feeling is that professional or
semi-professional users should avoid it completely, regardless of what
Yamaha, Tascam, Edirol and others who want to provide *cheap*
connectivity to home studio users say in the advertisements.
Actually they're not cheap at all. The main benefit of usb audio
devices is the portability. However, now that firewire is becoming a
much cheaper alternative usb devices are probably going to become
obsolete like the Laser disc has.