On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 5:10 PM, Len Ovens <len@ovenwerks.net> wrote:

I have been reading what I can on audio interfaces... I am thinking there
are very few good ones. I am thinking that some parts of the system are
vastly over priced like ADAT and MADI interfaces, both of which seem to
cost about 10X (at least) what they should cost... like how come a Gb NIC
is well under $100 and MADI PCI(e) card (100Mb) is $800?

Gb NIC sales: in the millions

MADI PCI(e) card sales: low thousands if you are lucky, hundreds if not

> For audio quality, it seems FW, USB and ethernet _could_ give better results if designed right.

none of them live "on the bus" the way a PCI card can. all of them are subject to a separate clock, in addition to the audio sample clock and the PCI bus clock (which is so high a frequency as to be mostly irrelevant).