Audio Interface - Firewire or USB

skent · Post by **skent** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 8:14 pm

Just picked up a new Mac and Ableton. Been reading the forums and found that most people recommend the NI Audio Kontrol. However since I have firewire on my Mac should I be looking at firewire interfaces?

ubermnd · Post by **ubermnd** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 8:23 pm

you would get a significantly better performance from a FW interface imho. What's your budget?

chrysalis33rpm · Post by **chrysalis33rpm** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 8:24 pm

I don't know where you would have read that "most" people recommend the NI interface. There are dozens out there, I guess that one is not loved or detested more than most IMO.

Most "pro-level" (or whatever you wanna call it) interfaces do use firewire these days- but a strong thing to consider is where you think the firewire interface is going, now that Mac has dropped it from their consumer grade laptops.

I personally think it will stick around (in the form of FW800), but that is the major question if you are choosing between the two.

skent · Post by **skent** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 8:26 pm

My budget is $400 or less. The only thing I like about the NI is the price and it comes with a free synth. Other than that I am open to suggestions. Just out of curiousity why is firewire better?

synnack · Post by **synnack** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 8:26 pm

Is it a laptop? My macbookpro only has 2 USB ports so I went Firewire so those 2 ports would be free for USB controllers.

Apple seems to be moving away from firewire in all models outside of their most expensive ones now though. And you'll have more flexibility with USB since you can use that in pretty much any computer.

In the past firewire was always proffered and faster than USB but with USB 2.0 I'm not sure how relevant that is anymore.

chrysalis33rpm · Post by **chrysalis33rpm** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 8:27 pm

firwire 400 is marginally faster than USB2.

siddhu · Post by **siddhu** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 8:30 pm

Firewire is a much more robust protocol that was especially designed for transmission of audio and video data.

If your only playing back audio with a just a few tracks you can get away with a USB interface.

However if you are serious about getting into production then FW is the way to go.

BTW: Firewire is not on the way out as a protocol just because Apple dropped it from the MBs.

They have no plans to drop it from their "Pro" line.

Here's the quote from a former lead Firewire developer at Apple:

Andrew Soderberg said 7:55PM on 10-16-2008

"While I lament the loss of FireWire from the new MacBooks (I was Apple's Original FireWire Evangelist from 1991-1993, while it was still code named ChefCat), I understand the reasoning.

The BIG main advantage of FireWire over USB 2 is the isochronous (Same-Time) data handshaking/transfer. Guaranteed data delivery at the time it is needed. This is very important to professional video editors, needing to work with one or more realtime video streams. USB 2 just can't deliver that.

While consumers benefit from FireWire in faster sustained data transfers than USB 2, they don't really take full advantage of FireWire's isochronous capability.   FireWire does cost more to implement in (chipset, connectors, licenses, etc.) than USB 2, and with everyone clamoring for lower cost MacBooks, something has to give. Also, you may remember the loss of Floppy disk drives, which Apple spearheaded, many a reporter claimed that the tipping point for no-floppy PCs had not come yet. When in fact it had, and Apple saw it and acted on it before everyone else.  

Such is the way of FireWire on consumer products (computers and cameras).  Apple will not be removing FireWire from the MacBook Pros or the Mac Pro towers, as these are the workhorses for most media production houses. Until such time as some other much faster peripheral interconnect comes to fruition, with the same or better realtime (isochronous) capability at a lower cost (there are faster interconnects - but much more expensive), FireWire is not going anywhere.

FireWire also has 1600, 3200 modes coming down the pipe as well.  The impact for those of us semi-pro media/video editors, will be that FireWire based external drives may become more expensive as there will not be as large a market for them going forward.  "

skent · Post by **skent** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 8:33 pm

Just to give you all more info I will be using soft synths only for my productions and really only need the audio inferface to go to monitors and headphones.

chrysalis33rpm · Post by **chrysalis33rpm** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 8:37 pm

@ siddhu- good to know, thanks for that.

I'll def be sticking with FW then.

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 8:43 pm

Apple's decision to omit FW from their new 'aluminum' macbooks is a big mistake IMHO. Although at least they left it in the plastic macbook.

NI's Audio Kontrol is just about the best USB interface out there and has similar performance to most comparable FW products, although it is a basic interface with not much I/O (Skent mentioned he did not require that at this time, but things can and often do change and it's better to have a bit extra I/O than not enough).

I think you have a wider choice with FW. Audio Kontrol is just about the only USB interface (maybe the Emu0404 usb also) in terms of reasonable performance but you can get marginally better performance from some firewire interfaces. Even if firewire becomes legacy, it will take 2-3 years for viable USB products (which are likely to use uSB3, an interface not featured on any currently available products), then the manufacturers will need time beta testing and delivering stable drivers and then getting the product out. This will take a long time, so if you are wanting to make any music in the next 2-3 years, FW is not a bad choice at all.

Superchibisan · Post by **Superchibisan** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 8:53 pm

i would just wait until usb3 comes out. should be perfectly fine for audio and have better driver support from microsoft.

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 9:15 pm

just like Microsoft got great vista drivers going on and especially vista 64

waiting for usb3 will be a loooonnnnnnnngggggggg wait. and not necessarily provide much extra performance edge.

The choice is yours, but if it were me, i would still go FW at this time. FW is performing well right now and should continue to be supported for the next 3-4 years at least, even if USB does eventually take over. You currently have a much wider choice of well performing FW interfaces.

The other option of course, and usually better still, is cardbus on a laptop. This only suffers in not having a lot of choice at this time.

4.33 · Post by **4.33** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 9:34 pm

i have an AK1 and it's capable of ridiculously low latencies (better than EMU 0404 USB I had earlier)

however, i have run into a midi loopback problem using AK1 MIDI I/O
customer support said "it's not a generally known issue"
i'll take this further, but for now i had to get an additional midi I/O interface

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 10:35 pm

siddhu wrote:However if you are serious about getting into production then FW is the way to go.

disagree.

how can you support your claim?

either is fine.

synnack · Post by **synnack** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 11:00 pm

Tone Deft wrote:
siddhu wrote:However if you are serious about getting into production then FW is the way to go.
disagree.

how can you support your claim?

either is fine.

I suppose "serious" could mean wanting to record several tracks of stereo audio at once while playing back and "FW is the way to go" meaning for multi track recording the parallel bandwidth of FW is ideal?

Either way it doesn't much matter since the original poster seems to only need a way to listen on headphones.