USB 2.0 audio interface

[kingbenlucas]

why is usb 2.0 not recognised as it should, it is faster than firewire 400 and it is far more practical!
anyway i am currently using an m-audio firewire 410 live and would like a new interface for two reasons, i cannot power it from a pc laptop as they only have four pin and the outputs are unbalanced other than that its amazing.
i cannot find a compact interface that has similar specifications i.e lots of outs.
anyone know of anything?
cheers

Benjamin

[JAYDMF]

Edirol UA101 or UA1000 offers a wide range of ins and outs on USB. Motu 828s are great too. Theres several options but most have as many ins as outs and be careful because some units state things like 26 i/o which is great if your using lightpipe etc but if you want analogues its a bit crap.

[sampo]

The firewire audio specification offer so much more than what USB ever has. Firewire offers for example sync over the firewire connection. This means that you can run multiple firewire devices at the same time on the same clock signal without the need for wordclock syncing.

One reason why there is so much interest in designing firewire devices as opposed to USB or PCI is because of Bebob and DICE. They are very solid firewire device "platforms" which offer a huge number of i/o "out of the box" - like ADAT and SPDIF codecs.

In short: firewire is far superior and gives us better gear. That's why.

[Pete Carter]

i beleave also ( i could be wrong ) that the band width on usb is shared between the ports per controller so if you have a interface connected and say a usb harddrive you may have band width issues,this isnt a problem if you have more than one controller, but if you only have one like on most laptops it could be an issue.

anyway the main reason that puts me off a bit getting a m-audio fasttrack ultra 8r for example, is that with the firewire versions you can daisy chain them to double the ins at a later date.

[Dreamfullofzen]

usb 2 as far as i know is not faster then firewire 400, and the bandwidth issue with usb is a big problem and loads down the cpu...

well.. two things:

for "on the go" recording, get a macbook and firewire device, and leave your other machine in your home studio.

i prefer firewire. using a mackie satellite, and thinking of getting a MOTU traveller or 828III

[Pete Carter]

For my portable setup i use a laptop with windows xp with ableton and a usb interface. it works very well. The main reason ive not got a macbook is money and the fact that ive got so much software and plugins for windows it would cost me a large amount of money just to get the same results.

i use a mac with logic in a friends studio and its very nice, but i wouldnt say its better. as what ive got works with no problems why would i change. theres lots of windows laptops that have firewire on board it just so happens that mine doesnt.

it does wind me up a bit when mac users say that if you have a windows setup you should stop messing around and get a mac. firstly, its not an option for people who dont that kind of money and secondly a xp machine used just for music can be just as good. I think the main thing with windows is that if you want to use it for music dont use it for anything else. anti virus screws it up and other programs can sometimes create problems.

Pete

[Dreamfullofzen]

Originally Posted by Pete Carter

For my portable setup i use a laptop with windows xp with ableton and a usb interface. it works very well. The main reason ive not got a macbook is money and the fact that ive got so much software and plugins for windows it would cost me a large amount of money just to get the same results.

i use a mac with logic in a friends studio and its very nice, but i wouldnt say its better. as what ive got works with no problems why would i change. theres lots of windows laptops that have firewire on board it just so happens that mine doesnt.

it does wind me up a bit when mac users say that if you have a windows setup you should stop messing around and get a mac. firstly, its not an option for people who dont that kind of money and secondly a xp machine used just for music can be just as good. I think the main thing with windows is that if you want to use it for music dont use it for anything else. anti virus screws it up and other programs can sometimes create problems.

Pete

hey pete, i agree completely, and i'm not a mac user.... ;0)

Problem is that mac notebooks only have 6 pin firewire, so the solution is to use a macbook and interface for tracking only. then take the session or the tracked files onto your main workstation (which would be pc).

i agree that there is far too many cool things on pc for music that aren't available on mac.

I don't have a mac book, but i want to get a mac, mostly because i do allot o f graphic design work and macs excel in that kinda department.

that said i believe alienware make laptops with 6 pin firewire... pricey though.

[ecc83]

I think the fw/usb debacle goes on because of certain factors.

I) In UK at least, FW is not found commonly even now on mid price "office " pc's that we all are likely to have, at least to start with. Those with shares in Tex I, say Whack in a pci card. Well fine but the major point of an AI versus pci is that peeps don't feel confident rumaging about in a pc's gizzards. Then, I think I have read, some MOBOs' are not suited to audio FW even with a TI card.

2) Unless you actually try it out there is no guarantee that any particular pc/ FW AI is going to work and certainly where I live, that is hard to do. And laptops are rather notoriously fickle!

3) AFAIK FW has been around longer than usb 2.0 and it has only been a year or so in which usb 2.0 AI's have come to the fore.

4) Usb almost always works and always supplies power.

5) FW, it is said is faster and can run more tracks with lower latency but if you just need an 8 channel track grabber, usb 2.0 is fine.

6) Certainly IF you have a state of art pc with FW AND a top line AI AND it all works together bish-bosh really well from day one you are bound to say FW is the best thing since bread come cut. But it don't always go that way......


Dave.

[terminal3]

here's the thing.

USB2 is faster than firewire - but only in 'bursts.'

Firewire can maintain a consistent speed over long periods of time, and thus retains a degree of stability that USB2 can never have, because again, USB is 'only coming through in waves' if I'm to cop a Pink Floyd line to help describe what I'm trying to get at. and if USB is a wave, then Firewire is a jet of water not unlike a firehose at a consistent regulated pressure.

USB2 is also reliant on the host processor to work properly - so it actually eats a bit of CPU in order to function correctly, thus detracting from your ability to host plug-ins, obtain high track counts, surf the internet and post to these forums at the same time as doing a mix, etc.

Firewire, on the other hand, has its' own controller chip which handles all the math itself, and thus presents no additional load on your system resources.

So, in conclusion, FW is more reliable, predictable, and less tough on your machine. However, some machines don't have firewire, and thus USB2 is an OK secondary option, although I'd be wary of recording an orchestra with it.

hope that helps!

[Dreamfullofzen]

terminal brought up a point which is very important...

if you're looking to track 2 tracks at a time (two mono, or one stereo), then i'd go with USB...... but if you're looking to multitrack.... it would really have to be firewire. Anyone who says otherwise hasn't tried tracking 8 tracks at once....

it boils down to what kind of work you do. I do a mixture... production work with softsynths, samplers and loops (times like that firewire and no bus power are a pain). Live recording (bands, ensembles, and small choiral and orchestral stuff). I have yet to find an all in one solution for all of these situations.

ew.... usb 2.0 interfaces have been around MUCH longer then 1 year.......

Firewire is macs baby, i believe it was their answer to pcs USB system.

laptops aren't fickle.......laptop Users are fickle.... i've ben using them for years for audio work and never had any issues (aside from ones i've created myself!).

Ultimately, most Pro Interfaces (RME,MOTU,Mackie) tend to opt for Firewire. The USB 2 boxes also tend to be lower spec (bad preamps, average converters, etc.)

[ecc83]

Good morning Dreamfullofzen.

I did not say usb 2.0 was only a year old. I said it has only been in the last year OR SO that manufacturers have put the effort into the equipment.

There are now many usb 2.0 multitrack AI's on the market, are you saying products like MA's Ultra and gear from Tascam, ESI and many others does not work?

If you are getting solid results with a laptop and audio you are fortunate. This is one of the most common problem topics in the forums.

Of course you get the general quality you pay for at any particular price point but I thought that was what I was saying in point 6?

And you still don't find FW ports on UK mid price pc's.

Dave.

[Pete Carter]

The problem with usb interfaces was that to start with they were stuck with being backwards compitable with usb 1.1, so there was no way you could make anything usb that was much over the basic 2 in 2 out. Now they are using usb 2.0, 8 in seams to be the new limit. athough i beleave esi make a 18in interface with 12 balanced ins but it only has 2 onboard pres. i guess this gets round the bad pres issue,

The USB 2 boxes also tend to be lower spec (bad preamps, average converters, etc.)

The usb interface ive been looking has the same pres as the firewire version, so at least for m-audio that isnt the case.

[sampo]

Originally Posted by ecc83

And you still don't find FW ports on UK mid price pc's.

Here probably lies a lot of the problems people face. Low and mid price PC's are generally both cheap on the wallet and in the insides. For example laptops and interrupts: cheap laptops usually have multiple or all devices hooked to a single interrupt line. My Dell D820 on the other hand, has interrupts nicely wired up and there are almost no IRQ conflicts between devices. IRQ conflicts cause unreliable realtime performance - that is to say, you can't run apps with low latency without random dropouts. IRQ conflicts are also one reason why USB devices don't work well for some people.

One reason why macs are so good for audio is that Apple takes care that they use good hardware. For example proper FW controller chips.

People seem willing to pay for good mics, mixers, pre's etc. but skimp on the computer which records, processes and plays back nearly everything you do. You get what you pay for. When you do intensive processing with latency requirements, a cheap computer (be it a desktop or laptop) won't cut it. Having said that though, there are bad expensive computers and good cheap ones. Research, research, research.

[kingbenlucas]

firewire has a bandwidth of 400 and usb 2.0 480. it isnt a negative that usb can share the bandwidth through many ports because firewire only has one port so if you just use one port of your usb then you still get a higher bandwidth!

[JAYDMF]

The difference between the two is all down to how theyre implemented on the MOBO end of story. USB is a perhiperal device which has to load the processor to some degree and is slowed down by having many devices on the same system, but this is all dependant on how the manufacturer built the board, if they decided to use some of the NB to distribute the USB then its no different to Firewire as you can think of both as a PCI based system IE the NB chip is dealing with all the ins and outs before they get to the main CPU. Firewire is no better on a PC than USB unless you have literally every USB port in use in which yes you will have problem of speed. However all the crap about well firewire clocks together may well be true if youve bought an addtional card for a PCI or PCI-E slot however most motherboard only give you 1 or 2 firewire slots and the majority of these, even my Workstation Asus board, are connected to the same bus, connecting 2 firewire devices at the same time causes both of them to start dropping out. I will now draw your attention to the MOTU 424 card which come with the config program for all the breakout boxes that can be attached. If you look at how much 24 tracks of 96k 24bit actually takes up you'll see that both the USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 are both capable of achieving the same amount of simultaneous tracks being recorded.

if you want to big up firewire so much then go buy a filthy mac and you can boast til your hearts content but dont go around stating that USB is crap when if you bother to look at the technical side of it its actually not its dependant on the design of the MOBO your using.