Mixer Help, please!

[diebydesign_x]

Hello everyone,

I run an indie label here in NY, and I am fairly new to the recording business, and have a question. I am looking for a mixer, preferably 16 tracks or more, that supports multitrack recording, so I can record individual tracks, instead of an entire band on one track. I want to integrate the mixer into my in-the-making PC based studio.

I have looked at an Alesis 16 channel USB, but I have read reviews and said it does not multitrack, which is a big thing I need.

I also found this, the TAPCO Blend 16. From what I've gathered, it looks fairly decent. However, I don't know if I could record the individual tracks through it, and compile/master on my PC.

If anyone could look at it for me, and give an opinion, the link is http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Blend16/

Also, if you could suggest mixers to me, it would be highly appreciated.

Thanks for your time, everyone.

[sixways]

You're not going to find any USB mixer that will allow you to record a whole band at once into a PC. USB has extremely low bandwidth and at best you can get two audio tracks in at a time.

What you need is going to be something more like this: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Digi002R/ + one of these: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Octane/

Or a similar set up...

No, you don't have to go with Protools, thats just my preference.

You could also get a M-Audio 1814 + a Presonus Digimax LT + an 8 channel mixer

Then again, maybe you could look at

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Onyx1640/ 16 channel mixer with Firewire output (at additional cost) and some sort of Multitrack software.


The very first thing I would buy though is a good book on recording and do some research. Its sound like, even with your indie label, that recording digitally is a new thing for you.

6

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by sixways

You're not going to find any USB mixer that will allow you to record a whole band at once into a PC. USB has extremely low bandwidth and at best you can get two audio tracks in at a time.

Oh, man, the myths just keep on flying on this board.

1.) Die, learn how to build and run a recording studio and get some experience before you "run an indie label".

2.) There is plenty of bandwidth via USB to run multitrack audio. At 48kHz/24bits/sec per digital channel, one digital audio track requires 1.152Mbits/sec of bandwidth. Even if one is using just USB 1.1, that means enough room to run 8 channels of input and 2 channels of output at 48k/24 simultaneously. If you use USB 2.0, there is enough bandwidth for over 450 audio channels. For reasons that have little to do with technicalities and have more to do with business and the fact that media engineering has a much larger footprint in the Mac world than most PC applications and hardware, many audio manufacturers have ignored USB and settled on Firewire, even though USB can technically provide a wider and more stable pipe than FW.

I know this is just a technicality; that the end result remains that most manufacturers go to Firewire for their high bandwidth needs even if it's for non-bandwidth reasons. But I have found myself on a roll battling common myths on this board the past 24 hours or so, so I figure I might as well address this one again as long as I have my myth-slayer shoes on.

G.

[sixways]

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

Oh, man, the myths just keep on flying on this board.


2.) There is plenty of bandwidth via USB to run multitrack audio. At 48kHz/24bits/sec per digital channel, one digital audio track requires 1.152Mbits/sec of bandwidth. Even if one is using just USB 1.1, that means enough room to run 8 channels of input and 2 channels of output at 48k/24 simultaneously. G.

Can you provide a link for USB 1.1 interface that provides 8 simultaneous ins? Better make it 16, that's what his post asked for.

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[diebydesign_x]

I won't lie, I really don't have a lot of experience in the recording field. That's why I'm here. =) And as for the label, we don't record them ourselves, but rather we help with finding a studio that suits their needs. But that is besides the point.

Sixways- I've been reading through the forums, and the battle between USB and firewire is never ending! I have looked at the Onyx before, and it is nice. Unfortunately, with the budget I am on right now, it may be out of my price range. =/

SouthSIDE- Thanks for clearing that up for me. Digital recording is a new thing to me, definitely. Would you have any suggestions?


Again guys, thanks.

[sixways]

What's your price range and PC specs? How many tracks are you wanting to record simultanously?

I respect Southside, we'll just agree to disagree for now.

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[diebydesign_x]

My price range is about $800, more or less.

For comp specs, I have an internal 100 GB HD, and an external 80 GB HD. As for megahertz, i don't know. I don't use my desktop a lot, honestly.

[diebydesign_x]

This makes me want to stick to analog, lol.

[sixways]

You'll most probably enjoy digital once you get used to it.

I'd really like to know the processor speed and RAM for your PC. For your price range, its going to be hard to get over 8 simultaneous ins, so you really need to look for something that will give you options of expansion later. What I would do, in your situation, is get a Firewire 1814 (http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Firewire1814/) (8 analog ins with ADAT in for later expandability) and possibly a cheap mixer for now (http://www.musiciansfriend.com/produ...ers?sku=631231). Then you need software. Obviously, I like Protools M-Powered. That whole set up would be:

Mixer: $299
Protools: $249
Firewire 1814: $499
Total: $1,047

Or, you could go with the Presonus Firepod ($599). It has 10 inputs but no ADAT in, so you can't add that later. Ships with Cubase LE, which is limited to 4 simultaneous tracks. You can upgrade to Cubase SL for $299. That gets you in around $900.

But again, the first thing you need to buy is a book and do some research. Call the guys at www.sweetwater.com and tell them what you are looking to do, they are very helpful.

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[TuoKaerf]

You can also go the route of buying a nice interface with at least 8 ins, and the option to ADAT more in.

Instead of a cheap mixer, look into a control surface. It acts as a big mouse for the software you choose to use, and most of them have moving faders.

Dump your money into good plug-ins over buying cheaper rack gear. You'll be much more satisfied going that route than having 2 or 3 crappy hardware compressors.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

There is not much that I'd recommend for $50/channel ($800/16 channels) that'll get you all the way into the PC.

I'd consider something like the Tascam FW-1804 or the Presonus Firepod for $500. That'll get you into the PC (with good software) with 8-10 tracks at a time. You could add something like a Mackie 1202 as a small submixer if you had more actual simultaneous inputs than these boxes could handle. That'd take you to about your spending limit...assuming you don't have to spend that $300 on cabling to hook all this up. (And also assuming you already have microphones and all the rest of that jazz.)

OT sidebar @ 6:Six, you miss my point. I wasn't saying that there is a lot of multitrack USB gear available; in fact I said the opposite, that the manufacturers mostly use FW for that instead.

All I was saying is the the reasons behind that are more econo-political than anything else, and have nothing to do with the bandwidth capabilities of USB: USB 1.1 has a 12Mbit/sec bandwidth, which is enough for 10 audio streams at 48k/24bit, with a little left over. USB 2.0, at 480Mbit/sec, actually has 20% more bandwith than standard FireWire which clocks in at 400Mbit/sec. Even leaving plenty of headroom for error correction and other overhead, USB 2.0 actually has room for some 50 or 60 more channels of 48k/24bit audio than Firewire does.

Yet, the myth persists everywhere that USB can only handle 2 channels or so of audio because it is of such limited bandwidth; i.e. because it is so slow. This just is not true. That's all I'm saying.

G.

[sixways]

SouthSIDE:

You have enlightened me, I was not aware of the actual data rate. I was told that you could not get more than 2 ins and 2 outs using USB 1.1 by someone, and I took it as gospel I suppose. The myth I'm sure is at least substantiated somewhat by the lack of USB equipment with more than 2 ins. I thought I had found a product that disputed my position, an Alesis mixer that had 16 inputs and USB connection....fine print read that it only allowed a 2 track mix to travel via USB to the PC.

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[SouthSIDE Glen]

I can only speculate on the actual reasons why FW is used instead of USB, but I think it's a combo of reasons including:

- FW predates USB 2.0 (and I think 1.1, but I'm not sure.)

- FW was adoped early by the video industry and kind of became a defacto standard there

- FW was preferred by the Mac community whereas USB was largely a Wintel community push. Because of the prevalence of Avid and Pro Tools (not to mention Mac-based graphic design workstations) FW was favored as a standard interface for A/v and graphic transfer.

- It was largely a marketing and sales based myth that touted USB as low-capacity, 2-channel interface. That makes it a lot easier to sell FW interfaces and make more money doing it. (If you think Mackie isn't making money hand over fist selling their FW option for their Onyx mixers for $400, you have another thing coming . Just imagine then trying to sell a USB interface for that much. Sure they could, but it would be a lot harder because of the USB stigma that's been built up. But since FW is "so much better" than USB, it is easier to charge bigger bucks for it. :P )

G.

[chessrock]

Due to the architecture of the firewire platform, it's possible to utilize several firewire devices, simultaneously, within the same application ... and to have that application control the various devices without fear of drift, phase shift, and other clocking-related artifacts. This ability gives firewire certain advantages that developers find attractive; either that or it helps prevent problems and/or complaints that users might run in to in the future.

Now from what I understand, this doesn't mean that it's inevitable for USB 2.0 to run in to these problems ... just that, from what I understand, the work-around is much more difficult and/or expensive. Apparently, a lot of these bugs have already been researched and worked-around in advance when the initial groundwork for firewire was laid ... as Firewire was originally designed and intended specifically for audio and video, and with the needs of audio and video in mind ... while USB was originally intended for mouses and keyboards, etc., I believe, but don't quote me on that.

.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by chessrock

Due to the architecture of the firewire platform, it's possible to utilize several firewire devices, simultaneously, within the same application ... and to have that application control the various devices without fear of drift, phase shift, and other clocking-related artifacts.

The same can be said of USB, at least to a degree:

As to the first part, anybody who has printed or faxed documents from a USB drive (optical or magnetic) to a USB fax/printer while using their USB mouse to navigate their windows has used three simultaneous USB devices from the same driver.

As to the second part, I make no claim as to remembering all the intrinsics of sync and handshaking contrasting the FW and the USB protocols; there may very well be tech issues such as jitter and the like that are easier to overcome in FW than in USB, I'm honestly not sure (Not that FW hasn't hae it's own jitter problems in implementation over the years; it famously has.)

However, I will say that there seems to be no issue in running two audio streams over USB1.1 with no synchronization problems. And this is with other USB devices also running simultanously. Even if we were to assume that two audio streams (at ~2.3Mbit/sec total) were the most that 1.1 could handle because the rest of the bandwidh (other than for other devices) was needed for checksumming, synchronization, etc. that would mean that about 20% of USBs capacity was "useable" for such an application or calculation. Now frankly, this is ridiculous; there is no way that USB is *that* inefficient. But for the sake of worst-case-scenario discussion, let's say that 80% inefficiency were true. Extrapolated to USB2.0, this would mean that about 96Mbits/sec were available for stable streaming. This would mean a *worst-case-scenario* of the equivalent of over 80 simultaneous channels of audio at 48k/24 on USB2.0.

Originally Posted by chessrock

Firewire was originally designed and intended specifically for audio and video, and with the needs of audio and video in mind ... while USB was originally intended for mouses and keyboards, etc., I believe, but don't quote me on that. .

Oops, I am quoting you, chess. But don't worry, I am agreeing with your quote . Here's the full story as I understand it. It may not be 100% accurate, but it's a LOT closer to the truth than the Myth of USB.

USB (Universal Serial Bus) was originally designed and marketed to replace the old-fashioned and extremely slow serial and parallel ports while at the same time jumping over SCSI in data bus performace attributes,and was an initiative that (I think) was either started by or largely led by Intel to help keep the Wintel PC platform up-to-date in competition with Apple. Firewire was, OTOH, earlier developed by Intel's then-nemesis, Apple. Apple later brought the spec to the IEEE who approved it for the most part as cross-platform standard IEEE-1394.

Not long after FW came to be championed in the Apple community, the video market elected it for video stream transfer. Sony started it out, I think, and before you know it, everybody else followed suit. This was all more-or-less while Intel was still hashing out USB as a seriel/parallel/SCSI replacement.

So the table was pretty much already set; between Apple's hometown support of their own FW standard, their domination in the A/V/G workstation platform market, the video industry's adaptation of FW, and the perception that USB was/is meant mostly for peripherial device connection than it is for data streaming, FW has pretty much become the de facto standard for media streaming and high-speed data transfer.

Because it takes way too long to explain all that , it became much easier to make up the shared myth among sales and marketing types that USB simply wasn't fast enough; this myth had the advantage of implying that the (at the time) faster FW was "better" and therefore was worth paying premium markup for. Otherwise it would be hard (for a sales guy and his custy who both want easy preset explanations, at least) to justify why most Wintel platforms at the time came with USB ports (because that was Intel's baby) but a seperate FW I/F card had to be bought.

Nowdays, PCs with both USB and FW built-in are common place, but the myth of USB being insufficient for most high-speed needs still persists.

G.

[dgatwood]

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

However, I will say that there seems to be no issue in running two audio streams over USB1.1 with no synchronization problems. And this is with other USB devices also running simultanously. Even if we were to assume that two audio streams (at ~2.3Mbit/sec total) were the most that 1.1 could handle because the rest of the bandwidh (other than for other devices) was needed for checksumming, synchronization, etc. that would mean that about 20% of USBs capacity was "useable" for such an application or calculation.

That's not really the problem. USB has plenty of theoretical bandwidth. The problem is that it sucks down boatloads of CPU power to actually utilize that bandwidth. Even if you could do an 8 channel I/O on USB (and at 96kHz/24-bit, you exceed USB 1.1 by more than a factor of 3, ignoring overhead), you'd be eating so much CPU power that you'd get glitches all over the place unless your buffer size was larger than you'd probably like.

The other problem is that, officially speaking, there IS NO USB 2.0 audio spec. USB 2.0 audio devices are technically lying. They are USB 1.1 audio spec devices running at USB 2.0 speeds. The spec wasn't designed for that, and it just isn't all that reliable.

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

USB (Universal Serial Bus) was originally designed and marketed to replace the old-fashioned and extremely slow serial and parallel ports while at the same time jumping over SCSI in data bus performace attributes,and was an initiative that (I think) was either started by or largely led by Intel to help keep the Wintel PC platform up-to-date in competition with Apple. Firewire was, OTOH, earlier developed by Intel's then-nemesis, Apple. Apple later brought the spec to the IEEE who approved it for the most part as cross-platform standard IEEE-1394.

AFAIK, USB was designed by Intel entirely to replace PS/2 for keyboards, mice, and other low bandwidth devices, and high speed wasn't even in the cards during the initial design. The design was for cheap low- to moderate-speed devices. By the time USB 2.0 came out, they were stuck with a lot of design decisions that they probably would not have made had it been designed for high speed communication to begin with.

FireWire was, as best I understand it, originally designed to replace PCI as an internal systems bus. The specifications allow for up to 3200 Mbps (nearly as fast as 66MHz 64-bit PCI).... FWIW, FireWire was designed as a joint project by Apple and Texas Instruments, not just Apple.

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

Nowdays, PCs with both USB and FW built-in are common place, but the myth of USB being insufficient for most high-speed needs still persists.

Ah, but it is woefully inadequate. Even if you ignore the CPU overhead problems of USB (which become quite obvious when you do random access hard drive tests, for example), using USB for audio has a number of fairly serious flaws:

• No GUIDs. Two USB audio devices with the same chipset cannot be distinguished from one another, and can switch places randomly.
• Poor time stamping specification. USB audio devices have far higher complaint levels about pops/crackles than FireWire or PCI, in large part due to poor time stamps. I'm told that part of this is due to deficiencies in the spec, but I don't know specifics.
• Lots more ways for isoch reservations to go away. (Again, this is just what I've been told by folks who work with both, so don't ask me for details..)
• Significantly less power capacity than FireWire, making bus-powered 8-channel interfaces rather unlikely.
• No official USB 2.0 Audio spec yet, so anything that you buy is likely to be violating the final spec. One can only cringe at the compatibility problems that will emerge when the spec becomes final.

The difference between theory and practice is that in theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In theory, USB and FireWire should be equal for audio. In practice... they really aren't even in the same league.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by dgatwood

AFAIK, USB was designed by Intel entirely to replace PS/2 for keyboards, mice, and other low bandwidth devices, and high speed wasn't even in the cards during the initial design.

The answer is really in it's name, Universal Serial Bus. Intel wanted a universal I/O spec to replace practically everying. Well, maybe not quite everything, but close.

They had two probelms, as they saw it: first and foremost was one of the biggest complaints hey had from consumers about their platform was all those ugly and technical wires coming out of the back of their ugly and technical boxes. You had the parallel cable for the printer, serial for faxmodems, PS2 for mouse, and SCSI for peripherial storage. They wanted to simplify this via the one connection for all, a universal, plug and play bus that one could plug just about everything into.

The second problem was that interfaces like serial and parallel were woefully slow, and SCSI was obsoleting fast. While USB may not have been designed for what we would today call "high bandwidth", in it's original 1.1 spec it was most certainly much higher bandwidth than the technologies it was designed to replace, by a magnitude or two.

But nonetheless, everything else aside, the fact remains that by the time USB came out of the closet, FireWire was pretty much already selected by the manufacturers as the way to go. Hell, it had a several year head start. This, more than anything else, is the reason why FW is used for multichannel audio.

Not that I personally care about any of this, quite frankly. If my data gets to me by courior pigeon, I'm OK with it as long as that pigeon doesn't slow me down or shit all over my keyboard . FW, USB, pigeon, who cares? We have already given this subject far more attention than it deserves. The only reason I focused on it for a short period was to try and shoot down yet another urban myth (that it's bandwidth that limits USB to 2 channels.)

G.

[Synkrotron]

about the TAPCO, from the link above...

Besides the analog outputs you can route your signal through the stereo 24-bit/48kHz USB connection straight to your computer or standalone recorder

so that rules out the TAPCO for multi-tracking.



I've not had time to read the full topic yet and I've got to leave the office in a minute but has anyone considered ADAT or even TDIF?



andy


edit: ah yes... a couple of mentions of ADAT...

I'd personally recommend the ADAT option but then again I'm biased cos that's what I'm using...

[dgatwood]

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

The second problem was that interfaces like serial and parallel were woefully slow, and SCSI was obsoleting fast. While USB may not have been designed for what we would today call "high bandwidth", in it's original 1.1 spec it was most certainly much higher bandwidth than the technologies it was designed to replace, by a magnitude or two.

You're joking, right? 11 Mbps? Designed to compete with SCSI? The original SCSI was 5 MBps (that's 5 MegaBytes per second, or over 40 Mbps) back in the 1980s. SCSI-2 came out in 1989, at 10MBps (80 Mbps). By the time USB 1.0 came out in 1995, SCSI-3 had been codified for... I think 2 years... and devices had started shipping. SCSI-3 came in at 40 MBps (320 Mbps).

By the time the USB mass storage spec was released in 1998, SCSI had reached 80 MBps (640 Mbps). Note that this is half again faster than USB 2.0 (which didn't come out until about 2000, by which time SCSI was at 160 MBps, or 1.28Gbps).

Saying that USB was designed to replace SCSI is revisionist history. The first mass storage spec for USB didn't come out for three full years after the initial USB spec. Had it been part of the original desisgn, it would not have been so late to the table. Had USB been designed to replace SCSI, the initial versions would not have been released at a fourth the speed of SCSI drives that had been out for ten years at the time.

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

But nonetheless, everything else aside, the fact remains that by the time USB came out of the closet, FireWire was pretty much already selected by the manufacturers as the way to go. Hell, it had a several year head start. This, more than anything else, is the reason why FW is used for multichannel audio.

No, it's because the USB audio spec TODAY won't support 8 channels at a sampling rate above 48kHz. Any device that does 8 channels at higher rates on USB is abusing the spec. No manufacturer wants to limit their gear to 48kHz to fit within USB 1.1 specs, so their choice is to either use the USB 1.1 audio spec at USB 2.0 speeds (thus abusing the spec) or use FireWire.

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

The only reason I focused on it for a short period was to try and shoot down yet another urban myth (that it's bandwidth that limits USB to 2 channels.)

It's not a myth. If you comply with the USB audio spec, at 192 kHz, bandwidth DOES limit USB to 2 channels. Again, I repeat, even a mere 3 channels at 192kHz 24-bit sampling is a violation of the USB audio spec, as there IS NO USB 2.0 audio spec (unless it has come out in the last six months or so and I missed it).

[SonicAlbert]

Back to the original post...

What you need is a 16 channel mixer with direct outs on every channel. Then you need either: the mixer to have a 16 channel or more firewire capability, or an interface that can handle 16 or more simultaneous inputs.

-Or- skip the mixer entirely and record directly into a 16 channel interface like the DigiDesign 002R. Personally, I'd probably skip the mixer and record straight through an interface to disk.

However, in either case your budget is really too small in my opinion. To go the Digi 002R route, you'd still need to pick up an ADAT converter like the Behringer ADA8000 and a few preamps for the four line inputs on the 002R. So your budget is $1,200+ or so.

In the mixer scenario, the Mackie Onyx seems like the one to look at, unless you go with an all digital mixer.

[Synkrotron]

If I was starting out afresh and know what I know now I would take the following route:-

Purchase two Behringer Ultragain Pro-8 Digital ADA8000 which is an 8 channel ADAT A/D converter which will give you a total of 16 channels. You could argue that the mic pre's are not the best but if you're on a tight budget then you need to make compromises somewhere. You should be able to pick up two units for $460 or thereabouts.

Ultragain

And then you'll need a suitable audio card with ADAT cabability and I would recommend the RME Hammerfall Light DIGI9636 which you can pick up for around $400.

DIGI9636

If you don't have any DAW software then I'd recommend Sonar 5 which costs around $300.

You may then decide that you need some mastering software. I'm currentley getting into Sound Forge 8 and with that you get bundled a package called CD Architect which is used for burning your masters to CD. That costs around $270. In the future you could purchase some of the higher quality plugins but for now you could probably manage with the plugins that come bundled with Sonar and Sound Forge.

Well... so far that comes to $1430 so I guess that's not much help... and you haven't even bought the cables and such yet. But... it's food for thought and give you another option to consider...



andy

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by dgatwood

You're joking, right? 11 Mbps? Designed to compete with SCSI? The original SCSI was 5 MBps (that's 5 MegaBytes per second, or over 40 Mbps) back in the 1980s. SCSI-2 came out in 1989, at 10MBps (80 Mbps). By the time USB 1.0 came out in 1995, SCSI-3 had been codified for... I think 2 years... and devices had started shipping. SCSI-3 came in at 40 MBps (320 Mbps).

What I said (perhaps not too well) was that Intel wanted a single method that could do what serial, parallel, PS2 and SCSI did. It was their answer to the perceived complexity of the Wintel hardware I/O platform. I'm not saying it was a great answer. And yes, the SCSI spec is obsolete. I said nothing about USB replacing fast/wide SCSI, SCSI 2 or SCSI 3, only that they wanted a spec that combined the functional capabilities of all the curent PC I/O protocols in a plug-and-play manner and in a single cable/bus format. This is not revisionist history, this is as it was explained, first-draft, in the tech news articles of the time. Now, if they got it wrong (entirely possible), then I'm getting it wrong, and I'll apologize for them and myself for that.

Originally Posted by dgatwood

It's not a myth. If you comply with the USB audio spec, at 192 kHz, bandwidth DOES limit USB to 2 channels. Again, I repeat, even a mere 3 channels at 192kHz 24-bit sampling is a violation of the USB audio spec, as there IS NO USB 2.0 audio spec (unless it has come out in the last six months or so and I missed it).

You said yourself that USB has plenty of bandwidth, but you were led to believe there were other technical reasons that made USB too inefficient or too difficult to use. That may be the case, perhaps, there may be a "gotcha" in the tech detials of the spec that I don't know that keeps the sustained data rates down. But my point is that issue is almost beside the point. When you look at the actual history, there were other factors that led to FW as a de facto standard for this stuff that had little or nothing to do with USBs performance.

As you said, USB came out in about 1995. Firewire was developed by Apple (and OK maybe TI had a hand in it too because someone had to build the chips) in the mid 1980s, about a decade before USB (give or take a year or two.) While it didn't officially become IEEE1394 until 1995 - the same year as USB - Apple had already had it for about a decade*. And well before it was "official" it was already being adopted by Sony and others as a method of digital video transfer from camcorders to the PC.

BTW, this adaptation of a protocol before it becomes a standard published spec is rampant in computer history; the fact that USB2.0 is not an actual official spec has no weight in precidence as a reason for non-adaptation by the manufacturers. In fact, Apple themselves are using USB 2.0 as the interface for the video iPod. Not only are they using this "non-standard" in the single most popular electronic device made today, but they have actually dropped their own FW standard in favor of it.

But back to history as I witnessed it. A combination of FW already having years of foothold as an existing and even proven (if not yet "official") protocol by the time USB came around, combined with it's early adaptation by video manufacturers as an audio and video transport protocol before USB came around, and the fact that it was the hometown favorite of Apple, who dominated the A/V/G market for hardware platforms, established FW as the way to go, USB bandwidth or no USB bandwitdh. Frankly, USB didn't even enter into the equation at the time.

But it's a lot easier from a sales and marketing standpoint to blame the bandwidth - especially when one has to justify the higher cost of the FW interface, and THAT, in fact, is where I believe the revisionist history comes in.

*Interestingly enough, Wikipedia has it the other way around, saying that the 1394 spec came first in the 80s and Apple's implementation of it came in 1995. I'm not sure that is true, as I believe Firewire was part of the Mac group's efforts in the 80s to design a high-speed (at the time ~100Mbit) internal data bus. Either way, it doesn't change the equation that FW/1394 was a spec that had already been kicked around and been in use in one flavor or another for about ten years before Intel released USB.

G.

[Cyanide-Depende]

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/produ...are?sku=184131

$599 10 channels, its firewire (my preference) the mic pre's arent great but they're still better than most. Also, you can daisy chain them to get 20-30 channels.

Comes with Cubase which isnt bad, but it works with protools and abelton

[sixways]

Originally Posted by Cyanide-Depende

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/produ...are?sku=184131

$599 10 channels, its firewire (my preference) the mic pre's arent great but they're still better than most. Also, you can daisy chain them to get 20-30 channels.

Comes with Cubase which isnt bad, but it works with protools and abelton

Dude, this hunk of shit does not work Protools.



BTW, I really don't think its a hunk of shit, thats just for added effect. It DOES NOT work with Protools though.

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[Cyanide-Depende]

Oh... it does work with abelton which I use and Cubase which It come with. Never-the-less it is an option

At least I know not to use it with protools now though, lol

Originally Posted by sixways

Dude, this hunk of shit does not work Protools.



BTW, I really don't think its a hunk of shit, thats just for added effect. It DOES NOT work with Protools though.

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