Are more expensive firewire expresscards better?

[ambientidm]

so is an express card is going to give me lower latency (via vsts) on my motu traveller than using the built in fw800 on my mbp?
they also make on with a usb ports+fw400
better for the virus ti?

[fishmonkey]

no.

[Orion Satori]

From the side of a consumer/prosumer, company support is key, yes. From the purely quality concern side, what you are looking for and likely paying for, is the quality of the D/A, A/D converters, and if it has them, the preamps.

And by quality convertors, I don't just mean the sample rate. 2 products can have the same sample rate while one does much higher quality D/A,A/D conversion. ( Heck, at my school many of the teachers complained when they got rid of a Studer Digital console to install a Pro Tools Icon and HD convertors. The reason for the switch was that the Studer only did 96k while the Pro Tools converters did 192k....though by comparison tests and also by the ears of MANY pro engineers, the Studer A/D convertors sound WAY better at 96k than the HD cards do at 192k.)

I recommend checking reviews at Gearslutz.com ( That place tends to be populated by real pro engineers who can give you a very qualified opinion. )

Dude, we're talking firewire expresscards, not audio interfaces.

[Hermanus]

Yes a Firewire expresscard but it is purposed to plug an audio interface to it.

[TheUriah]

From the side of a consumer/prosumer, company support is key, yes. From the purely quality concern side, what you are looking for and likely paying for, is the quality of the D/A, A/D converters, and if it has them, the preamps.

And by quality convertors, I don't just mean the sample rate. 2 products can have the same sample rate while one does much higher quality D/A,A/D conversion. ( Heck, at my school many of the teachers complained when they got rid of a Studer Digital console to install a Pro Tools Icon and HD convertors. The reason for the switch was that the Studer only did 96k while the Pro Tools converters did 192k....though by comparison tests and also by the ears of MANY pro engineers, the Studer A/D convertors sound WAY better at 96k than the HD cards do at 192k.)

I recommend checking reviews at Gearslutz.com ( That place tends to be populated by real pro engineers who can give you a very qualified opinion. )

Dude, we're talking firewire expresscards, not audio interfaces.

"Dude", read the thread.

[Orion Satori]

Yes a Firewire expresscard but it is purposed to plug an audio interface to it.

And?

From the side of a consumer/prosumer, company support is key, yes. From the purely quality concern side, what you are looking for and likely paying for, is the quality of the D/A, A/D converters, and if it has them, the preamps.

And by quality convertors, I don't just mean the sample rate. 2 products can have the same sample rate while one does much higher quality D/A,A/D conversion. ( Heck, at my school many of the teachers complained when they got rid of a Studer Digital console to install a Pro Tools Icon and HD convertors. The reason for the switch was that the Studer only did 96k while the Pro Tools converters did 192k....though by comparison tests and also by the ears of MANY pro engineers, the Studer A/D convertors sound WAY better at 96k than the HD cards do at 192k.)

I recommend checking reviews at Gearslutz.com ( That place tends to be populated by real pro engineers who can give you a very qualified opinion. )

Dude, we're talking firewire expresscards, not audio interfaces.

"Dude", read the thread.

Dude. I made the thread. YOU read the thread. I don't know why you're going on about this stuff when I'm asking about the difference between firewire cards. You're not even talking about firewire cards. Preamps? A/D converters? This is not found on firewire expresscards, but audio interfaces.

[MacGuffin]

I assume you need this because you have a PC with a cheap Ricoh firewire chipset instead of TI.

I did some research not too long ago on that and found that Presonus recommended a specific expresscard for PC users that have their firewire products. I'm not 100% sure, but I assume that this model should be of a nice enough quality for most other brands as well (the cost was about 60$)