firewire or new soundcard?

S

stevethecarr

New member
I have a crappy USB preamp now and a shitty soundcard and I'm looking to upgrade. If I get a firewire recording unit will I also need to buy a better soundcard or doed the firewire recording unit act as a soundcard while I'm recording. And also what imput on my computer would I plug a firewire console into being as I dont have a direct firewire imput. I have heard that you can plug it into the game controller port but would like some more information on that. Thanks!
 
_warning_ newbie answering!

...but I've just figured this out for myself. The soundcard's job is mainly AD conversion. When you use firewire, you send a digital signal to your computer, the AD conversion takes place somewhere else (for instance, in the firewire card of your Onyx mixer). What you need in your computer is a firewire input - available on a handy, $10,- card available in any PC shop. So you can ditch your soundcard and don't need a new one.

Regards,

Roelof
 
if were me i might wait a bit and let the firewire tech settle down further.
i would consider a pci sound solution with external preamps eg...dmp3 or rane preamps. if you post your pc confign IN FULL i'll make suggestions.
 
I have a pentium 4 2.0 ghz 512 ram shitty onboard sound card 80 gig hard drive, also if I did get a firewire card would it be the same as getting a sound card or is it just an interface. In other words would I still be able to use the sound card on my computer for normal computer use?
 
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As far as I know there is nothing wrong with Firewire. I use it daily. No issues. So I'm not sure what manning is refering to.

USB on the other hand I would stay away from.
 
IN FULL PLEASE.
what do you have in your pci slots ?
any network cards for the net (eg hi speed), tv tuner cards ? or fancy video cards ? if so - and you get skip problems...while recording....
disable in windows except for the video card. if still problems consider replacing video card with a matrox. thery are well behaved.
at this point i would say you have a vgood system with enough memory.
my only advice would be to consider adding a second hard drive (preferably
8mb cache , 7200 rpm of course) on its own channel and use THAT for
all your tracks. then youll have a very fine daw.
search under my name for lots of other tips on mics, software,monitors,sound cards etc etc posted in past year.
peace.
vestast. all i'm saying is err on the side of caution with firewire.
its a great solution, but i'm waiting myself for further varaiety of firweire products to hit the market. ie...more competition tends to drive down prices.
also there have been SOME firewire chipset issues it seems.
 
stevethecarr said:
I have a pentium 4 2.0 ghz 512 ram shitty onboard sound card 80 gig hard drive, also if I did get a firewire card would it be the same as getting a sound card or is it just an interface. In other words would I still be able to use the sound card on my computer for normal computer use?
Click to expand...


OK now I understand what manning is saying. Before you buy any firewire PCI card I would check with the manufacturer of whatever firewire device you are looking at to see what they recommend.

But to answer these questions, the firewire card is not the same as a sound card. It's similar in function to a USB card. What you need is an external device to plug into the firewire card on your PC. For example I use the Tascam fw-1884 which when plugged into the firewire slot gives me 8 channels of input with the option of another 10. Maudio also makes fw devices with less inputs that I don't know much about.

And yes you can still use your stock sound card for normal computer use. This is exactly what I do.

So again, USB bad, Firewire way more stable.
 
firewire? check out MOTU 828, if you have the cake to shell out, this unit looks awsome. m-audio has the 1418 which looks pretty good too. I was inticed for a while about a mackie onyx mixer and firewire card but that is just too much money.... not worth it unless you really need the mixer for something else.
 
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