Firewire is dead, Long Live USB 3.0

MrWrenchey said:
It's not four times faster. USB3.0=10Gbps (not now, I don't think, but as previously stated, it's getting bumped up to that), and Thunderbolt=10Gbps
Haha, even prior to this, it was 5 Gbps, which is half, not a fourth... I dunno where you're getting these numbers.
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Yeah, it is definitely not four times faster.

In my research though, I have found that there were/are rumblings of Thunderbolt hitting 20Gbps in 2014. However, that info was found before Intel made a statement about how much they're backing the USB 3.0 update. Which was surprising considering how they co-developed Thunderbolt...
 
MrWrenchey said:
It's not four times faster. USB3.0=10Gbps (not now, I don't think, but as previously stated, it's getting bumped up to that), and Thunderbolt=10Gbps
Haha, even prior to this, it was 5 Gbps, which is half, not a fourth... I dunno where you're getting these numbers.
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Not correct.

Thunderbolt is 20 Gbps - two channels at 10 Gbps each.

USB-3 is 5 Gbps (though there should be a 10 Gbps version of USB-3 in 2014, but that's still half the speed of Thunderbolt).
 
Concentrating on raw data transfer rates is a pretty pointless exercise though.

My existing Firewire setup handles 32 in/32 out at 16 bit/44.1. The number of times I've actually needed that capability I can count on one hand--and it would be a rare home studio that could cope with 32 open mics at the same time. Perhaps if I was recording the LS0 in Abbey Road doing the music track for the next James Bond film it might be important--but I suspect I'd be using a very different hardware solution.

Frankly, 5GB (or 10GB or 20GB) will be way in excess of what's needed for any home recording task I can think of.

...which leads me to say that things like cost and backwards compatibility will likely be far more important factors.

My money is on USB3 becoming ubiquitous while Thunderbolt dies a quiet death. (Of course, this is unless some sort of new super application suddenly appears--maybe 3D Virtual Reality like a Star Trek Holodeck--makes an appearance. However, home recording's needs will NOT be that application.)
 
Bobbsy said:
Concentrating on raw data transfer rates is a pretty pointless exercise though.

My existing Firewire setup handles 32 in/32 out at 16 bit/44.1. The number of times I've actually needed that capability I can count on one hand--and it would be a rare home studio that could cope with 32 open mics at the same time. Perhaps if I was recording the LS0 in Abbey Road doing the music track for the next James Bond film it might be important--but I suspect I'd be using a very different hardware solution.
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If you were recording the LSO at Abbey Road, 32 would be plenty enough.

When I was at a recording session of the LSO at Abbey Road a while ago they used just 30 microphones - recorded through RME interfaces into Sequoia (and the massive Neve mixing console was only used for monitoring).
 
Well, a minor quibble is that for film scoring they often through a more rock style band in at the same time and up the mic count!

However, that said, it very much puts into perspective the channel count needs (and there for raw data throughput) for any typical home studio. Thunderbolt and/or USB3 will find their niches for applications I can't even manage now--but music recording will not push the capabilities of either new format at all.

(And, for the record, the few times I've used all 32 channels on my set up have been recording live theatrical musicals--typically 18-22 radio mics on the performers and 10 or 12 mics on the orchestra. That was entirely enough for me! FYI, the faders were being used for the live FOH mix with pre fade direct outs on "auto pilot" going to the recording.)
 
firewire dead... but what about

Yup.. firewire is dead (just try finding a laptop with a port)... and there are millions of musical devices out there that connect with (yup) firewire. Yes.. I know, you can still get cardbus slots & firewire cards... but I wonder for how long.
Someone (like Rain maybe) would REALLY be smart by offering firewire ports in their damn laptops (its been done for years... can't be an engineering hassle). If your the only game in town... you WILL make a profit guaranteed (and screw all the other "follow the leader clones"). I just had a sysboard fry on $2000 Toshiba laptop (by the way... they don't stock parts for 'OLD" computers. Do we really need to redesign the whole damn thing ever 3 months and make the new parts incompatible)??? I mean.. couldn't you at least make the board fit in the old case???? (since everything is on the sysboard, cant be any issues besides size & ports)

Damn I hate when they obsolete things early ("end of life") and obsolete your whole damn studio !!!:mad:
 
Wow, i don't know how i missed this the first time round.

Anyway, my experiences seem vastly different to the majority it would seem. When i started out recording i had a Maudio PCI thing (24/96 possibly) which, after much trying, discussion with people who seemed to know what they were doing, and cursing very loudly turned out just wouldn't play nice with my computer. I then moved on an Maudio USB Audiophile that very quickly became the bane of my existence due mainly due to driver issues. Even at uni the trusty Mbox's seemed to only work properly depending on their mood/time of day/ambient temperature/the tone of voice you used with them.

Then, due to where i was working, i moved over to Mac's 8 years ago, went firewire and never looked back. Second hand G4 Powerbook with Maudio Firewire Audiophile - fine and dandy. Upgraded to Macbook White with Audiophile - wonderful. Macbook white died after a lot of....well.....hard use (and even then it was only the screen that went and i still used it for a year with an external monitor but it made portable recording difficult). When it came the time to replace the macbook white and upgrade my AI i very, VERY seriously considered a USB interface and a new macbook air. However, after 6 months or so of procrastination, general indecisiveness, and numerous roundabout discussions with friends and colleagues i ended up with a macbook pro and the presonus firestudio mobile. Maybe it's not entirely future proof but i'm no rush to move back to the windows camp and firewire to thunderbolt adaptors are now readily available.

As i said, maybe it's just me, maybe i've just been lucky, but i'm in the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" camp and seeing as i've had no trouble with firewire whereas i've experienced enough usb based hell for a lifetime i'm happy enough where i am :)
 
I've got no problem with my firewire set up other than, when I replaced my laptop last November I had a very limited choice of Windows machines that still let me do FW. I finally went with one that had a cardbus slot and bought a Firewire adaptor which is working just fine.

I figure by next replacement I'll also be forced to change my interface though.
 
Firewire was primarily a Mac thing, its never quite caught on with PC's on a mass scale, hence their rareness.

Just like there's different grades of USB, there's different grades of Firewire....400, 800, etc. Most people who use Firewire interfaces are only using 400.

So if you think USB 3.0 will take over, then Firewire 800+ will take over that.
 
Bobbsy said:
I've got no problem with my firewire set up other than, when I replaced my laptop last November I had a very limited choice of Windows machines that still let me do FW. I finally went with one that had a cardbus slot and bought a Firewire adaptor which is working just fine.

I figure by next replacement I'll also be forced to change my interface though.
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Maybe not Bobbs! There is a thing called "external" PCIe that is coming along soon and should be available on laptops.
I have not as yet been able to find out much about it it but from the name an ePCIe to FW adaptor seems feasable?

Tbolt seems stuck in the mud according to some pundits. RME for instance seem to have gone very cool on the idea. (ref SoS forum "Audio Interface Low Latency Database)

Dave.
 
So then I'm confused. Some think FW will hang around, but Presonus doesn't seem predisposed to releasing new FW audio I/F. My MacPro is 5 years old and still awesome. But I don't want to attach more F/W if future equipment is just going to bypass F/W. Though my MacPro will never have USB 3, do you think I can count on USB2 being good enough for the forseeable future?

BTW, specifically refering to Presonus, do they use threading efficiently? I have eight cores and it would be great if they can efficiently offload CPU work. If so, I might not worry too much about USB vs FW.
 
ustamills said:
So then I'm confused. Some think FW will hang around, but Presonus doesn't seem predisposed to releasing new FW audio I/F. My MacPro is 5 years old and still awesome. But I don't want to attach more F/W if future equipment is just going to bypass F/W. Though my MacPro will never have USB 3, do you think I can count on USB2 being good enough for the forseeable future?

BTW, specifically refering to Presonus, do they use threading efficiently? I have eight cores and it would be great if they can efficiently offload CPU work. If so, I might not worry too much about USB vs FW.
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USB2.0 always WAS good enough! The problem in the earlier days was that AI designers used the processing power of the PC to do most of the work (because they could with usb? FW has to be selfcontained?). This led to problems because 6-7 years ago the average punter did not have a very high spec' machine*. Today, 2.6G 2 cores is a phone!
Then, because usb was seen to be the "prosumer" end of the market the drivers were pretty crap. These days usb has come of age and there is gear now that is the equal of FW. I do wish however that AI makers would get into usb 3.0? The extra speed might not be needed but it is nice to have the "redundancy"? But a bigger advantage of usb 3.0 is nearly twice the bus power which should enable more mic pres and decent headphone levels from portable gear.

*When I moved up to a 3.2G P4 with 2G ram my Behringer BCA2000 "came alive"! The BCA2K was one of the very first usb 2.0 AI s ever made and ran very well (2 mic/line/inst, 8outs, ADAT MIDI in/out/thru, optical and co-ax S/PDIF) but kept breaking down!)

Dave.
 
I agree that Firewire is dead but, before we get to "long live USB3" we first need to get past it's protracted birthing pains.
 
USB3 is dead - long live Thunderbolt :thumbs up:

You can certainly get Thunderbolt adaptors to run Firewire on a new MacBook Pro when you upgrade later.

Thunderbolt is a lot faster than USB3.
 
John Willett said:
USB3 is dead - long live Thunderbolt :thumbs up:

You can certainly get Thunderbolt adaptors to run Firewire on a new MacBook Pro when you upgrade later.

Thunderbolt is a lot faster than USB3.
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If you believe that, I have a lovely bridge I could sell you!

In terms of real world speeds, the differences aren't as big as you'd think. Frankly, though, speed is probably the least of the issues--there aren't many applications where even old fashioned USB2 isn't enough.

However, my prediction is that this isn't going to be a performance battle. The killers will be price (USB3 is built into chips from both Intel and AMD at practically no cost) and backwards compatibility (USB3 will let you plug in your old USB and USB2 stuff).

I can throw in some Betamax video recorders with that bridge if you like!
 
Haven't heard of many Thunderbolt interfaces either...and the few I do know of are actually Firewire that contain an internal FW to Thunderbolt adaptor.

I suspect the reason there aren't many USB3 devices yet is that there are 100s of USB2 ones which will plug straight into USB3 on a computer. Unless you need the extra speed (we'd be talking well in excess of 16 simultaneous tracks) there'd be no real advantage to adapting an existing interface.

It'll come when USB3 is as common on computers as USB and USB2.
 
Bobbsy said:
Haven't heard of many Thunderbolt interfaces either...and the few I do know of are actually Firewire that contain an internal FW to Thunderbolt adaptor.

I suspect the reason there aren't many USB3 devices yet is that there are 100s of USB2 ones which will plug straight into USB3 on a computer. Unless you need the extra speed (we'd be talking well in excess of 16 simultaneous tracks) there'd be no real advantage to adapting an existing interface.

It'll come when USB3 is as common on computers as USB and USB2.
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As I understand it, Apple have moved to thunderbolt which is directly compatible with firewire.
The word adapter often puts people off, but I don't believe there's any conversion or trickery there.

I use my motu FW interface with thunderbolt on my Macbook Pro.
I don't even use an adapter, as such. It's just a cable with FW800 at one end and TB at the other.

Now, it does seem that apple is the exception to the rule. I don't know how many manufacturers will follow suit; Probably not many I guess.

Where interfaces go from here I don't know, but the idea of firewire being dead or even dying hasn't been sold to me yet.
If my motu died tomorrow, I'd go out and buy a replacement firewire interface.
 
If you follow the Apple route, that's probably safe (though I wouldn't count on too many years of driver updates for FW). However, in the PC market you already have to mess around a lot to get a FW interface...and the Windows OS still hugely outsells Apple even if the percentages are gradually changing.

If you use PC/Windows don't even consider investing in Firewire...you'll be very sorry very soon.
 
Bobbsy said:
If you follow the Apple route, that's probably safe (though I wouldn't count on too many years of driver updates for FW). However, in the PC market you already have to mess around a lot to get a FW interface...and the Windows OS still hugely outsells Apple even if the percentages are gradually changing.

If you use PC/Windows don't even consider investing in Firewire...you'll be very sorry very soon.
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Yeah, you're probably right.

OSX drivers is an interesting one. Part of me can see it being dropped like you say, but the optimist in me thinks it might carry on for a good while.
Two reasons
1: There are no massive architectural changes in the pipeline that I'm aware of. The 64 bit transition was reason not to bother with unessentials but but post 64-bit, apple drivers seems pretty forgiving. I'm sure I still have the odd 64 bit snow leopard driver kicking around on my machine.
I'm aware of some manufacturers who appear to have taken that opportunity to cease support for certain devices.

2: Manufacturers pretty much lose the apple market if they don't produce firewire/TB interfaces.
You'd assume the mac market would be important to them, right?
Course, maybe USB2 will do the job for that market. Who knows.
 
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