Firewire Vs USB audio interface?

[RCCollins]

I'll take that bet. I would bet that you'll find a firewire interface on their Pro machines for quite some time.

OK, i mean it's a gloat bet but you can hold me to it. In three years to this day, no current production apple computers will have a FW port (neither 400 or 800).

If I am wrong I will buy a neon green speedo and provide a link to a photo of myself wearing it (I won't embed the image on TB)

 

[fretlessrock]

Just so we are clear: 36 months to completely replace a 10+ year old standard that has an installed base the size of FW? I think that I'd rather have you NOT post the speedo pic if you lose! Maybe something best kept to yourself

But since you claim such amazing powers of clairvoyance and have such faith in Apple as a power-broker in external interface standards: What is taking its place? USB3 has been on the drawing board for about three years and isn't in production yet. Even the optimistic industry reports don't have it hitting the shelves until 2010... so you then have two years for Apple to totally ditch FW (which they support now in both 400 and 800) in favor of either USB3, (on every model, MacPro to MacMini...) or some other standard, because they didn't put FW on one MacBook model. All of that FW audio, video, storage, A/D... All of it has to run on legacy machines and you don't have a comparable standard to switch to. I couldn't care less about the bet. I'd just like to see something more than your vapid braggadocio.

 

[RCCollins]

Well I also think that it is lame, so I wouldn't call it braggadocio.

However, 10 years as a "standard" (and FW is NOT perfect) translates as "overdue for a replacement" in technology terms.

I don't see a replacement - people will be stuck either sticking with old gear (which is totally OK), seriously compromising with some kind of USB interface ( ), or upgrading all their stuff to whatever tentative replacement is foisted upon us (those who can afford to).

I agree that the speedo idea is pretty lose/lose

Just so we are clear: 36 months to completely replace a 10+ year old standard that has an installed base the size of FW? I think that I'd rather have you NOT post the speedo pic if you lose! Maybe something best kept to yourself

But since you claim such amazing powers of clairvoyance and have such faith in Apple as a power-broker in external interface standards: What is taking its place? USB3 has been on the drawing board for about three years and isn't in production yet. Even the optimistic industry reports don't have it hitting the shelves until 2010... so you then have two years for Apple to totally ditch FW (which they support now in both 400 and 800) in favor of either USB3, (on every model, MacPro to MacMini...) or some other standard, because they didn't put FW on one MacBook model. All of that FW audio, video, storage, A/D... All of it has to run on legacy machines and you don't have a comparable standard to switch to. I couldn't care less about the bet. I'd just like to see something more than your vapid braggadocio.

 

[fretlessrock]

Well I also think that it is lame, so I wouldn't call it braggadocio.

However, 10 years as a "standard" (and FW is NOT perfect) translates as "overdue for a replacement" in technology terms.

I don't see a replacement - people will be stuck either sticking with old gear (which is totally OK), seriously compromising with some kind of USB interface ( ), or upgrading all their stuff to whatever tentative replacement is foisted upon us (those who can afford to).

I agree that the speedo idea is pretty lose/lose

First, sorry for coming off as snotty about this. I would rather say that than edit my earlier reply. I don't know the answer either, but I think it has more to do with solutions to the disappearing onboard FW ports than FW vanishing. It may/will come down to FW users needing to depend on external FW interfaces (USB3, SATA, Expresscard, PCI, PCMCIA) in order to drive their FW devices.

I can see that FW plays a comparatively small role in the overall peripheral market and it makes more sense for the industry to put their resources into something other than onboard FW chipsets. The MacBook issue is a little perplexing because they didn't leave users with a solution, other than to buy a different machine (no FW800, no ExpressCard...). i.e. If Apple came out with a gigabit ethernet to FW adapter and supported it within OS X, that would be different. But they didn't. I'm more of the mind that the MacBook without a FW solution is more of an aberration or trial balloon than a trend. I'd expect to see either FW800, USB3 with a FW peripheral, or some ethernet based solution as this plays out. Likewise, I have been wrong about a lot of things, including thinking that bloatware operating systems were doomed back in 1997 (M$ made them dominant), and that rom/kernal approaches like the Amiga and C64 (now extinct) were a better mousetrap... so I'm just as likely to be on the wrong side of this, maybe more likely. But I do feel that there has to be a good solution, and I think that the user community reaction to the MacBook debcle was heard loud and clear in Cupertino.

Either way, i wouldn't recommend that someone bail on FW for a while, and maybe for a long while. There are a lot of excellent FW interfaces out there at good price points, and they will continue to be in service for a long time to come.

 

[NJL]

in case you guys didn't already know, the updated Mac's that were released today have firewire.. iMac, Mac Pro and Mac Mini

 

[ahiddentableau]

I think if you have FW then by all means use it. I know the stats say that this shouldn't be the case, but performance-wise it really is way ahead of USB 2.0. The only thing you're conceivably giving up at this point is resale value.

I have an Apogee Duet and it's the greatest thing since bread came sliced. If you have an FW Mac and don't need to record more than two tracks at the same time then I can't recommend it strongly enough. Pretty amazing piece of gear.

 

[BurningSkies]

Not that this would happen to anybody else, but I had a major USB failure last night. None of the USB ports would work. I couldn't use any external controllers. I think the essentially all the ports go through the same on board controller.

I won't have time to check it out but I suspect it's a software problem. I bet an automatic update got me. (I had the system on the internet to update some licenses, I got lazy and just left it on there.)

Good thing I use a PCI audio interface as it worked fine. When it comes time to upgrade my system I will probably look for a PCI express bus solution. Unless I have assurance that ports use separate internal controllers for redundancy.

I've only seen Directwire on PCI like boards and some firewire interface - and it's too handy to live without.

Ah-ha. I had this happen with my old 4 track recording rig. 4 Channel USB interface into a Compaq PC...There was a badly wired outlet in the room we were playing in, shorted across the XLR cables at the interface and blew out my USB controller, giving me three dead ports. Of course a laptop without USB is pretty useless. Soon after I upgraded my recording to a MOTU8Pre/firewire and can use the same computer in dicey rooms. Also used it as an excuse to purchase a macbook pro .

I run Cubase on both systems and luckily have a FW harddrive and can get the files from one place to the other.

 

[chjohnst]

How are vendors like Line6 coming up with recording pods like the UX8 (8+ inputs) dealing with the latency issues of USB? I have a two channel setup I use now for @home recording that works fine, but I am looking to expand my recording device to something with more inputs. I am in a holding pattern on making a purchase until I can find a unit that suits my needs (firewire seems to be the only answer for that).

Unfortunately my new mac laptop has USB only!

 

[Muzak Man]

Soo... how about that picture?

 

[Troph]

Soo... how about that picture?

Firewire is mostly dead on the Apple platforms, and while you can buy a "Thunderbolt to Firewire" converter, there just aren't many reports yet of how well those work with recording interfaces.

USB2 is still ubiquitous, so it actually got a boost in popularity when Apple dropped FW ports on all laptops in late 2010.

The USB3 feature set looks quite good for interface manufacturers. Now that Win8 has shipped with inbox support for USB3 host controllers, vendors can focus on writing their device drivers on a standard platform. This should start to do for USB3 what Win98SE did for USB2, albeit more slowly.

 

[azureblue]

is a Mac with both FW 400 and FW 800 ports. I have my audio rec. drive on the 800 and the FW interface on the 400. Very quick, no latency to speak of, and a lot of band width. Way back I started with using an ext. drive to record onto, and never went back to int. drive recording. Maybe this is why I have not had issues. I have several ext drive cases with USB, FW400, and FW800 ports on them, and they are perfect for carrying projects to other computers..

 

[warnergt]

I'll take that bet. I would bet that you'll find a firewire interface on their Pro machines for quite some time.

Firewire on Macs is definitely on the way out. However, that
doesn't mean I wouldn't buy it. New Macs are going to the
ultra-fast universal Thunderbolt interface. With adapters, it
works with just about anything (e.g. HDMI, Ethernet,
Firewire, Fibre Channel, PCI Express, disk drives, displays,
video cameras, video capture, etc.).

For audio interfaces, Firewire blows away USB. I would still
go with Firewire even if it means I need an adaptor ($29) for
my future Mac.