FW 800 cardbus better than onboard FW 400?

[mojofunk]

I am wondering if anyone can tell me if obtaining a cardbus adapter with firewire 800 will result in less latency than my onboard 400 . . . I am, with a reasonable amount of fx etc, only able to muster 512 samples, giving me a round trip of about 26 (edit - milli)seconds. That is doable, but since I am playing mostly guitar and bass it does feel pretty unnatural. The interface is a presonus firestudio, and I guess I hoped for better, more playable latencies. Is it my firewire 400 to blame, or other factors (the machine is quite streamlined, no networking or unnecessary services or wireless - the usual stuff). Would a cardbus adapter allow full firewire 800 speeds? Thanks for any advice! Cheers.

[mojofunk]

Anybody? Er, um, bump.

[pip]

A straight-up upgrade to FW-800 will not improve your speeds; you are limited by the Firestudio which is only firewire 400. If anything, you might make things worse.

A cardbus adapter might improve your speeds if it's using a better firewire chipset than the one currently built into your laptop. You will need to research both your laptop AND whatever card you plan to buy.

My suggestion browsing a more general audio forum, or a digital video forum; those guys pick and argue about firewire speeds all day long!
Seriously, though, I hear TI (Texas Instruments) chipsets are the ones to get; though they are typically more expensive, they seem to be the most desirable.

(Also, you're not running any other firewire devices simultaneously, like a hard drive? You know that's bad, right? )

[mojofunk]

Thanks for the response! I suppose I'll have to find other ways to get the most out of my setup . . . it's a dissapointment that the firestudio is strictly 400, but maybe if I simplify my template set I can get better performance. Thanks again!