Ableton Forum

No cheep Thunderbolt audio interfaces on the horizon that I know of. You could always get the Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter ($30 USD) and put the port to use with an external drive or a FireWire interface.

Affordable hubs are still rare. There are a few, but the affordable ones skipped FireWire.
Thunderbolt is overkill for most Audio Cards in the lower price range. And USB 2.0 beats FW400. Not a lot of FW800 interfaces out there, apart from in the higher price range.
Thunderbolt is a nice concept, but I expected it to be the key to supercomputing along with external GFX cards. On a UAD Apollo, Thunderbolt is a 400€ add-on.
So basically I'm still waiting for 200$ mega-hub to pop up.

I'm waiting a bit too for prices to come down. I'd love to use it for external back ups, but Thunderbolt drives in the capacities I NEED for the work I do are still stupid expensive. I think we're a ways off from seeing it on lower end soundcards unfortunately.

hoffman2k wrote:USB 2.0 beats FW400.

Not true, plenty of discussions why on the web.

I have the Apple Tbolt-FW800 adapter and have used it with my two FW audio interfaces, works fine. Not that I would recommend investing in a new FW interface at this point, even mfrs who have supported FW for years like Yamaha and MOTU are moving over to USB.

I suspect the first Thunderbolt audio interfaces will be pro units offering huge bandwidth...64+ channels for example. Some units may pop up next month at the NAMM show.

no thunderbolt devices here. I use my old motu ultralite with a FW-cable connected to the thunderbolt-port without problems.

TB will be discontinued. It's flawed port. Not technically but conceptually. If you use it for LAN and Display how do you plug your HDD and Audio I/F? Hub? Where is TB hub??

How is it flawed? The words daisy chaining comes to mind. Most, if not all TB devices like display or HD enclosures I've seen so far has that option.
..much like I remember it was with firewire in the beginning. We'll probably see a tb hub someday.

Most TB cables seem to be around $50 sadly.

Technically its 2 sets of chips connected by a cable. So I wouldn't really mind a hub with like a 20cm attached cable. That should cut like 30$. I wonder how much screens we would be limited to by connecting them to added ports of hubs.
Thunderbolt could really deliver some interesting things, but as usual... Apple is so far ahead of its time, other manufacturers are still contemplating catching up. And Intel really didn't make it easy.

doghouse wrote:

hoffman2k wrote:USB 2.0 beats FW400.

Not true, plenty of discussions why on the web.

I have the Apple Tbolt-FW800 adapter and have used it with my two FW audio interfaces, works fine. Not that I would recommend investing in a new FW interface at this point, even mfrs who have supported FW for years like Yamaha and MOTU are moving over to USB.

I suspect the first Thunderbolt audio interfaces will be pro units offering huge bandwidth...64+ channels for example. Some units may pop up next month at the NAMM show.

Not saying there's anything wrong with it. RME's USB products show the actual practical limits. With the right drivers, USB 2.0 can match up against any FW400 device with the same amount of IO.
FW800 is obviously faster and can take more channels, but as you point out, the developers are moving away from it. Now that USB 3.0 is supported via TB, its a more likely candidate for future devices.

If this works as advertised it will definitely find itself in my studio
http://www.belkin.com/us/thunderbolt

It'll be interesting to see if the USB3 ports are backward compatible. Weird that it has audio I/O too, but still looks useful.

Tysonviolin wrote:If this works as advertised it will definitely find itself in my studio
http://www.belkin.com/us/thunderbolt

Yeah that's a beautiful thing for sure, better than any dock I've seen to date.
Shouldn't be any reason it won't work, nice.

^^^
At $400 suggested retail it's a bit overpriced IMO.

Tarekith wrote:Most TB cables seem to be around $50 sadly.

They have chips in them. They aren't just like the old iPod cables which can be had for $5 at Fry's.