Thunderbolt soundcards

[nowtime]

If this Light Peak/Thunderbolt rumor is true and we have a whole new transmission technology available tomorrow, how will that affect new soundcards, particularly in regards to latency?

Reason being, I have been waiting for an RME UFX that I ordered back in October, and I am worried I will have outdated technology from the get-go. I would presume RME would have a Thunderbolt version within 6 months. Do you tech-heads think I would be missing out on that much? I'm thinking of cancelling my order.

[shuutobi]

You said thunderbolt AND transmission in the same thread...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNBtzYO2VoU

[hacktheplanet]

I just heard about Light Peak today and it looks pretty neat. It's a great idea to FINALLY have a single daisychainable connector for everything. Now if they can just make it wireless...

I'd say go ahead and get the interface. I doubt the Light Peak implementation will be without bugs at first release. It's pretty typical for a new product/tech to come out and then a superior hardware revision be released shortly afterwards. Apple is notorious for this. While I love my MBP to death, there's no way in hell I'll buy a first release of an Apple product. Plus, think of how much bus bandwidth audio uses. Honestly, not that much unless you're streaming a shitload of channels at high sampling rates. FW800 or USB2 is plenty fast for most audio work. (If you are streaming a shitload of channels at high rates, disregard my conjecturing)

One thing I might be concerned with is latency. It will be interesting to see if Light Peak improves on recording latency.

[cids]

Check:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much- ... tpeak.html

[theoriva]

Voila!!!

http://www.apple.com/uk/

[johnnymossville]

"Thunderbolt" is twice (10Gbit/sec) the theoretical speed of USB 3.0 (5Gbit/sec). Since there are pretty much no USB 3.0 Pro Audio products on the market right now I'd say the standard has a pretty good chance.

No USB 3.0 ports or SATA 6 Gbit/sec Hard Drives though, as far as I can see in the specs. Which is kind of a bummer.

I'm not sure I like it, but then Apple isn't known to make very poor choices.

[cids]

You will be able to connect USB 3 devices to your Thunderbolt port, and why would you like to use eSATA when you can buy a Thunderbolt external harddisk as well...?

[johnnymossville]

You will be able to connect USB 3 devices to your Thunderbolt port, and why would you like to use eSATA when you can buy a Thunderbolt external harddisk as well...?

That's cool about using USB 3.0 devices in the port.

[cids]

From the Apple website... "With PCI Express technology, you can use existing USB and FireWire peripherals — even connect to Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel networks — using simple adapters."

http://www.apple.com/thunderbolt/

[trilo]

Yes, the potential is definitely there for sound cards. It remains to be seen how long it will take for the products to come to market, though. As with firewire and USB, I expect that the first devices to market will be hard drives, which would also be a great benefit to anyone trying to manage audio or video production on a laptop. One of the reasons I went with the bigger MacBook Pro that I did when I got my last laptop (back when the "Pro" line started at $2K) was because I needed firewire 800 for disk I/O, and now there's a 10Gbps connection even on the little one - that's awesome!

Intel's got their formal shindig a little later today, and then we'll see what happens with PC manufacturers over the coming weeks and months. The faster that Thunderbolt makes it to the 3rd-party motherboard and system manufacturers, the faster we'll see the audio interface (or even controller) manufacturers start to take advantage of it.

[hoffman2k]

“Thunderbolt technology is connectivity without compromise and will enable the full promise of Symphony I/O, Apogee’s professional digital audio recording platform.”
– Betty Bennett, CEO, Apogee

“We are very excited by the capabilities of Thunderbolt technology. To have two 10Gbps, bi-directional, multi-protocol channels in a single cable is a great step forward for high performance audio and video solutions.”
– Max Gutnik, Sr. Director, Product Management, Avid Technology

“Technology like this only happens about once a decade. We are thrilled about the performance and simplicity Thunderbolt technology will bring to our award-winning UAD Powered Plug-Ins platform.”
– Bill Putnam, CEO, Universal Audio

http://www.intel.com/technology/io/thun ... /index.htm

[casiblake]

A shame then that Apple still insist on lumbering their 13" laptops with poor on-board graphics and a combo drive. In 2011!

[hacktheplanet]

A shame then that Apple still insist on lumbering their 13" laptops with poor on-board graphics and a combo drive. In 2011!

For real. I've used the optical drive in my MBP like once in the last 4 months.

[ItsAllSticky]

I just picked up my 13" MBP today, the higher-specced one with the 2.7Ghz i7. I'm so pumped. Could care less about the ODD like a lot of people, but I'm sure I'll use it at least once before the computer goes ka-put It's a really nice machine, happy to have a backlit keyboard and considering I was about to drop over $2k on the previous generation Core i7 at 2.6ghz, i'm really happy I waited. It'll still be more than enough for what I need. Most excited about thunderbolt for the HDMI capabilities (via adapter) and ready for an external drive that features this tech! Next step, replacing the 5400rpm drive with an SSD! And here's hoping Lion supports trim! The graphics don't really bother me considering I'm only using this for audio...as long as meters are relatively accurate I'm good!!!

[Hidden Driveways]

Among media device makers, Aja, Apogee, Avid, Blackmagic, and Universal Audio have all announced support as well

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11 ... _2012.html