USB Laptop soundcard vs. Firewire

freundemitdemteufel · Post by **freundemitdemteufel** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 7:40 am

Hi, im new and this is my first post. 90 percent of my recording process is done with hardware; however when I bought my M-BOX (v.1) it came with protools, which I hated, and Abeltone live which I have been using and actually like so I have stayed using it - with my hardware setup. My Digidesign M-BOX runs on USB 1 and have been thinking about trading to an RME or other M-audio firewire box.

Are the benefits of the firewire boxes THAT much better than the USB counterpart?

djsynchro · Post by **djsynchro** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 10:00 am

If it ain't broke don't fix it. Firewire is faster, (but not that much) but if you do a search on the forum, there are lots of people who have problems with Firewire on Laptops.

frisbeedisk · Post by **frisbeedisk** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 10:32 am

Yeah like me, Dont buy m-audio 410's as they are utter shite. Keep cracking up and distorting on you, when you dont need it, like half way through a set..if anything go for RME, or the new Moto ultralite thingy thats coming out(if fact wait till this has been tested).

tomperson · Post by **tomperson** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 1:55 pm

My 410 works just fine.

bottha · Post by **bottha** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 3:24 pm

My FW410 had issues with my Dell XPS Gen 2. I'm pretty certain it was caused by an IRQ conflict. I purchased a PCMCIA firewire adapter and the problems went away (different IRQ than the built-in firewire port).

Jesse_mtl · Post by **Jesse_mtl** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 6:16 pm

usb 2.0 has a higher transfer rate than firewire 4 pin or 6 pin... but it is sensitive to cpu resources on ur computer. so if ur computer is slow, usb 2.0 will be slow also.

firewire , 6 pin - 9 pin , can carry more phantom power in watts ( 45W ) than USB, and it is not cpu resouce sensitive. there fore its a direct connection in a sense..

go with firewire use your brain, if your serious about audio, and u dont want dropouts.

freundemitdemteufel · Post by **freundemitdemteufel** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 6:59 pm

I havent had any problems with my Mbox, and it sounds pretty good but I was just wondering how much better a firewire box would sound. USB2 is an option, I have a fast cpu, 1.6m. And its loaded with 1GB of RAM (windowsXP).

djk · Post by **djk** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 7:10 pm

Don't forget to look at PCI (if desktop) or cardbus interfaces (if on laptop). They still perform as good and usually better than FW or USB. There was a good article in Sound on Sound a couple of months ago talking about the pros and cons of each format. It was a roundtable discussion with manufacturers from the main interface manufacturers. It was pretty interesting.

Personally, I have a MOTU FW interface, which sounds good but has not been trouble free. On PC, there are a lot of configuration issues to work out with FW, including chipset compatibility (TI chipsets are usually preferred) and fixing a SP2 bug that affected firewire speed. Not insurmountable, but a pain.

RME is by far the leader out there in terms of quality, but they are very expensive. Their support is also supposed to be top notch.

USB 2.0 is really only now coming into its own in the audio world. I would expect to see more and more interfaces using USB in the near future. From what I can glean, it is faster on paper, but not so much in real life (at least according to benchmark test, which suggest that USB 2.0 doesn't really run at its peak speed of 480 and is a one way pipeline). That said, it's not clear whether you will really notice much of a difference unless you are recoding a lot of tracks at once (even then, it's unclear whether you would notice any real difference). Despite being "slower," the benefit of USB 2.0 is that it is more widely supported and "might" have fewer configuration issues on Windows machines. The jury is still out, though

Good luck and let us know what you decide.

Moody · Post by **Moody** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 7:38 pm

Signifigantly faster. Although, you may not see benefits unless you plan on using more audio I/Os.

DJSK · Post by **DJSK** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 10:25 pm

M-Audio's fast track pro is a decent sound card. It's USB 2.0 not firewire but it has pretty decent latency. I get around 5 ms for input and 5 ms for output. I am not sure if it will satisfy your recording needs since it only has 4 inputs but it works alot better then any of their firewire products as far as reliability. Only up to 48 kHz sampling though with multiple inputs. If you are recording only digital then you can get 96 kHz.