usb or firewire for external soundcard

[ctdf]

thank you for the suggestion, that beast looks wicked

£700 is still way too out of my budget

it will mostly be used for production with perhaps the occasional performance out on my macbook once i get everything sounding crisp

anything out there for those of us with lighter wallets?

[zalo]

I feel it depends on what system you are using, even pc or Mac.

The reason I say this is that all PC's support USB and do so very well. A lot of pc Laptops do not have any in built firewire ports, certainly not 6 pin ports (so the unit can be powered over firewire). Therefore you need a firewire PCMCIA card to run the soundcard. Where as with a Mac 6 pin firewire is standard.

I use a firewire Saffire Pro with a PC, I have had a few issues, I believe the main issues revolve around my PCMCIA firewire card.

9 pin is the bus powered version on macbooks/highend pc laptops

6 pin is the mini one standard on pc laptops with firewire

Actually, that's 6 pin & 4 pin that you're describing.

http://www.cablestogo.com/product_list.asp?cat_id=608

im dumb, i dont even know what i was thinking about when i typed this, i havent slept more than 5 hours a night for the last week and its catching up to me

[Hermanus]

Choose Firewire If you don't want any headaches added

A bit expensive for some but really rewarding at last.

A cheap one there from behringer, for the price it's a great audio interface... http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/FCA202.aspx

77euros on Thomann's website

[mistadreamz]

I would suggest Edirol FA-101. Its firewire and I use it without problems on my notebook and desktop.
The good thing with firewire is: all usb-ports on your notebook are free for controller, mouse...
A lot of notebooks just come with two or tree usb-ports. Controller and soundcards often don´t work on USB-Hubs.
If the firewireport on your gfx-card isn´t working well you can buy a firewire-pci card. They are not expensive.

[FreQshifter]

I see some of you recommend the rme uc. Well I own a rme fireface 400 and I'm having problems with it. The new Imacs have a new FireWire chipsets and I believe they put in a much cheaper FireWire chipset in the new macs. Sometimes ableton can read my rme and sometimes it doesn't work. I unplug it plug it back in and have to restart the computer and still problems. I think there os an issue with the drivers. I heard it works better for windows.

Many people say it's a good interface but I think otherwise. I recommend to stay clear from FireWire. Does anybody own the rme uc with mac. I probably switch to USB if it's that good.

And what do you guys think of the apogee duet??

[zalo]

figured out what i was thinking about

6 pin is firewire 400 and 9 pin is 800

[CutterFiltoff]

I can't recommend RME enough. I have all RME conversion in my studio, and it's never failed me. On big advantage RME has, is they actually write their own drivers for 1394a, while all other companies use generic 3rd party drivers customized for their interfaces. When I originally purchased my FF800 I was able to A/B it with an Apogee Rosetta. I personally couldn't tell the difference.

[gjm]

I have Alesis iO/14. Both the 14 and 26 have 64bit support.
I have used it on a pc lappy XP3 4 pin TI chipset, a desktop Quad 6600 XP3 Pro with non TI 6 pin PCMCIA card (just a cheap one) and an early 2009 macbook. Works just fine on all.

One reason I like it is for daisy chaining my hard drives through the iO/14 to free up USBs on the macbook.

[JuanSOLO]

I use the Alesis IO 26, on a Macbook Pro, before the unibody came out. It has worked great on my Laptop as well as my PC Desktop. I got it to record my old band on Ableton, and it seemed to be a great price for what you get.

In my current band I run it as an Audio Out, I use it instead of my Audio 8 running Traktor Scratch Pro, and route guitar into Ableton to get guitar Synthesis, plus a vocal mic for Vocoder stuff all at the same time.

The have fairly good preamps, lots of routing possibilities, etc. Look em up they are a great buy.