Need advice on USB/Firewire audio interface

[Hei©o]

After i bought ADAMs A7X, i decided to take care about my audio card too. I bought an ESI Julia 6 years ago, and seems to me now like it is too cheap card for ADAM`s

I was thinking about some external device, FW or USB, with good A/D converters, 24-bit/192khz and 2 audio outs for speakers would be enough.
In approx. 450€ price range, it can go over that sum if it`s RALLY worth it.

Thanks for your help!

[H20nly]

i've been eyeballing this one:

http://www.tcelectronic.com/impacttwin.asp

i own its little brother the Konnekt 6 and love it.

[Khazul]

RME babyface?

[Hei©o]

that "Impact Twin" looks pretty interesting, but it`s more like 600€ here :-/ will check "Babyface" soon

Thanx guys!

[gardener]

Sorry to hijack the thread but are PCI cards still the preferred choice for desktops or are firewire/usb as good now?

Thanks

[pc999]

Sorry to hijack the thread but are PCI cards still the preferred choice for desktops or are firewire/usb as good now?

Thanks

For really low latency the PCI is still better.

Maybe thunderbolt or USB3 will change it.

[Khazul]

Sorry to hijack the thread but are PCI cards still the preferred choice for desktops or are firewire/usb as good now?

Thanks

For really low latency the PCI is still better.

Maybe thunderbolt or USB3 will change it.

PCI express/express card and thunderbolt may be able to acheive lower latencies due to potentially far lower driver overheads (and of course far higher data bandwidth available). USB3 unlikely due to much higher driver overhead. For most audio interfaces upto 32 channels or so each way, USB2 speed doesnt contribute much at all to overall latency, so USB3 will hardly be noticed. It will probably be quite soem time before we see any thunderbolt audio interfaces other than very high end, high channel count, commercial studio systems and even then - not before Mac Pro gets refreshed and gets thunderbolt.

FW has higher overheads as well, but the way its organised means higher channel counts tend to work more reliably. USB2 in theory however can probably achive lower latency than FW400.

I can run my RME UFX (upto 30 channels in + 30 channels out) at 48 samples/44.1K with both USB2 and FW400 with Live 8 on a fast i7 based 64 bit PC.

[pc999]

Thanks for the info.

BTW for 192Khz take a look at EMU or Roland Octa-Capture, they may be what you need.

[Khazul]

192Khz? Erm - why?

Doing sound production for a hollywood studio in surround sound?

[Hei©o]

192Khz? Erm - why?

Doing sound production for a hollywood studio in surround sound?

yes!

just kidding.

Why not...?