CrowsofFritz
Flamingo!
How long do you all think it will be until interfaces will have this "Superspeed" connection?
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jaygee
New member
Some of the larger channel count interfaces may adopt soon, but no manufacturer will put them in unless USB 2.0 is inadequate.
saads
Baka
I dunno, I think a couple manufacturers will put em in, advertise how fast 3.0 is, and state how necessary it is. Other manufacturers will have to come out with a competitive model too.
Most people don't know any better; they'll say why not get the 3.0, it must be better than 2.0. Not sure why the average home recording hobbyist would need that speed anyway. 2.0/Firewire are perfectly capable of handling 10, 12 inputs simultaneously. In the end it'll come down to what they can sell, not what people need.
Most people don't know any better; they'll say why not get the 3.0, it must be better than 2.0. Not sure why the average home recording hobbyist would need that speed anyway. 2.0/Firewire are perfectly capable of handling 10, 12 inputs simultaneously. In the end it'll come down to what they can sell, not what people need.
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TimOBrien
New member
usb2 works with 16 simultaneous channels
Firewire400 does well over 100
Firewire800 twice that
Usb3 was estimated to actually do slightly less than fw400.. maybe 80 or so.
So there is very little incentive for manufacturers to make new hardware
when existing hardware works very well already.
More probable that Thunderbolt (many times faster than firewire and capable of hosting expansion boxes with PCI cards and multiple drives) will eventually overtake firewire for heavy data flow.
Firewire400 does well over 100
Firewire800 twice that
Usb3 was estimated to actually do slightly less than fw400.. maybe 80 or so.
So there is very little incentive for manufacturers to make new hardware
when existing hardware works very well already.
More probable that Thunderbolt (many times faster than firewire and capable of hosting expansion boxes with PCI cards and multiple drives) will eventually overtake firewire for heavy data flow.
CoolCat
Well-known member
like most tech advancements, usb 3 will be the only one available after awhile because it becomes the manufacturing norm.
same cable?
same cable?
saads
Baka
You're saying USB 2.0 does 16 channels and Firewire does 100 channels ?
If I'm not mistaken, USB 2.0 does 480Mbits/s while Firewire 400 goes upto around 400. I'm not sure how that will translate to a difference of 80 channels.
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TimOBrien
New member
usb is less efficient and has more overhead than firewire.
It also on achieves its theoetical speed in BURST mode (file copys) and
is not great for SUSTAINED data transfer.
Usb works with what they call a master/slave relationship to cpu&harddrives,
whereas firewire is a more efficient peer-to-peer relationship-- that means faster.
The 480mb/s figure is very misleading..... a well known and documented thing.
Thats why you dont see any usb interfaces over 16channels.
Usb3 has the same master/slave overhead as usb2, so it will (probably) not be as fast as fw400 for SUSTAINED data transfer.
It also on achieves its theoetical speed in BURST mode (file copys) and
is not great for SUSTAINED data transfer.
Usb works with what they call a master/slave relationship to cpu&harddrives,
whereas firewire is a more efficient peer-to-peer relationship-- that means faster.
The 480mb/s figure is very misleading..... a well known and documented thing.
Thats why you dont see any usb interfaces over 16channels.
Usb3 has the same master/slave overhead as usb2, so it will (probably) not be as fast as fw400 for SUSTAINED data transfer.
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DenverDrummer
New member
The problem is that Firewire is a dying (if not dead) technology among most other hardware vendors other than the audio interface world. Barely any new laptop (even top end ones) have firewire ports in them. You can still get cards for desktops assuming you have a free PCI slot in your computer.
Thunderbolt IMO will not take off. USB 3.0 is here now, there's way more devices out for it, and it's a much cheaper solution. Thunderbolt will require a 50 dollar cable per device, and they all have to be daisy chained together.
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DenverDrummer
New member
True but in the age of multi core CPU's and most computers with a min of 4G RAM that arguement really doesn't hold water today. I just got a core i7 laptop with 8GB Ram and record to an 8 in Zoom USB interface with pretty much no latency bumps or glitches.
I have no proof of this, but IMO the audio manufacturers are just plain lazy. There's several very good USB interfaces that have 8 channels for recording with 96khz or better. The drivers wheather ASIO or other are very low latency, at least barely detectable. Yet companies like preSonus who make some fabulous firewire interfaces, made a really lousy USB interface compared to some of the others on the market.
USB 3.0 is here now, it resolves many of the problems that USB 2 had, and has 10 times the bandwith. As I said before I believe it will be more ubiquitous than Thunderbolt, because right now only Mac's use it, and the cost of the periferals is outrageous right now.
USB 3.0 is the logical answer for the consumer market. Hopefully the OEM's comply.
CrowsofFritz
Flamingo!
Yes it is. I just went to buy an A to B USB 2.0 cable for my MIDI controller, and I would say half of the cables were 3.0. They were damn expensive!!! 50 dollars for a 15ft USB cable!
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TimOBrien
New member
Sorry but the cpu speed and ram is irrelevant.
I'm describing the DATA PIPE that flows in and out of the computer.
You could have a 50GHZ processor with 100GB of ram and the constricted size of the data pipe is gonna limit the bandwidth speed of the data.
I'm not arguing that Firewire isnt disappearing.
A lot of that also has to do with manufacturers just not wanting to pay royalties.
Just note that very very few FW800 interfaces exist although fw800 has been out for some time.
Mainly because very few people need 200+ simultaneous channels and its overkill.
The specs for FW1600 and FW3200 are out but nobodys moving on them for the same reason.
If usb3 or Thunderbolt devices come out, fine. I'm not saying they wont.
But there's no real rush because in the REAL WORLD usb2 and firewire are working for most people.
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DenverDrummer
New member
Actually it has alot to do with it. You're right there's a fixed pipe, so the way to get around that on USB is to have a large data buffer. I'm not saying a CPU makes the pipe operate faster, but with the kind of CPU's that are out today you can have large buffer size and have a large amount of throughput without pops skips and distortion which is a huge problem if you have an older PC.
You are right USB2 and Firewire are working for most people, but the fact is that firewire is still the predominate interface for Audio interfaces and it's going away. I agree about FW800, but again you are not finding any new PC's on the market with FW, and even Mac only is putting it on the high end mac book pro's.
The initial question was about USB 3.0, and I was merely stating that USB 3.0 will solve many of the issues of USB 2.0, and allow a cheaper upgrade path for newer interfaces, and it will be more prevalent in the market than any other solution. Thunderbolt will be there, but it's even more overkill than FW800, it's also going to be a very pricy solution.
dgatwood
is out. Leave a message.
That's kind of hilarious, given that vendors are already designing Thunderbolt audio interfaces, and I'm not aware of any vendors working on USB 3.0 interfaces.... The main reason for TB is that it simplifies the electronics significantly. You basically have a TB to PCIe bridge chip and standard PCIe hardware on the other side. This means much lower latency than USB or FireWire, much lower CPU overhead than USB, and the ability to externalize what previously had to be done internally (e.g. it would be trivial for MOTU to build a TB-424 that contained a 424 PCIe card with bridge silicon in an external box, and you could safely daisy-chain at least four of them off a single port). It utterly spanks anything you can do with any other bus....
TB also has the advantage of routing display data alongside that high speed data bus in a single cable, which means it can make things like built-in FireWire and USB 3.0 ports obsolete. In a couple of years, when your computer has TB, you'll be able to buy a TB monitor and you'll get all those ports externally without the need to clutter your actual computer with that hardware (under your desk where it's hard to get to). This is something that was previously pretty much impossible previously (ignoring the external PCIe and external HyperTransport hardware that never caught on for a whole host of practicality reasons).
BTW, Thunderbolt cables are expensive only because nobody is building them in quantities yet. I'd expect them to be on the order of five bucks apiece within a few years.
Oh, and Thunderbolt doesn't have to be daisy-chained. Plenty of devices have more than one Thunderbolt port, and AFAIK there's nothing in the spec that inherently prevents hubs.
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DenverDrummer
New member
Thunderbolt was pretty much dead from the beginning as an optical interface. I work for a company that designs optics for storage devices, and cables have always been very pricy. While it was good that Apple decided to go to a copper wire, it was dumb to make it a proprietary connector. Intel originally wanted to use a USB type connector, how cool would that have been? All for not.
It's going to be expensive because PC's are already comoditized and you have companies like HP who are going to dump their whole PC division. Plus it's all about tablets now and they will likely not have thuderbolt connectors for years, but USB 3.0 is a real option.
I'm not saying that Thunderbolt isn't faster than USB 3.0. I'm saying that 5GB per second is good enough for most people, and alot better than USB 2.0, plus it being bi-directional. Not to mention the fact there are just going to be more USB 3.0 devices, as there are right now. Companies like AMD are pusing for USB 3.0 to be the standard because they have no stake in an Intel only design.
I'm sure that Rolland, Zoom, and M-Audio who tend to develop more on the USB side will come up with USB 3.0 solutions. The best bet it to give people solutions and let the market decide.
It's going to be expensive because PC's are already comoditized and you have companies like HP who are going to dump their whole PC division. Plus it's all about tablets now and they will likely not have thuderbolt connectors for years, but USB 3.0 is a real option.
I'm not saying that Thunderbolt isn't faster than USB 3.0. I'm saying that 5GB per second is good enough for most people, and alot better than USB 2.0, plus it being bi-directional. Not to mention the fact there are just going to be more USB 3.0 devices, as there are right now. Companies like AMD are pusing for USB 3.0 to be the standard because they have no stake in an Intel only design.
I'm sure that Rolland, Zoom, and M-Audio who tend to develop more on the USB side will come up with USB 3.0 solutions. The best bet it to give people solutions and let the market decide.
dgatwood
is out. Leave a message.
It's not proprietary. It's a mini-Displayport connector, which is a published industry standard for computer monitors....
It would have been a big mistake. By using a standard video connector, it is able to provide data service while simultaneously delivering audio and video. Compared to that, running it over a USB connection would be lame.
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DenverDrummer
New member
No it's not, Apple owns the patent, meaning anyone who uses it pays them. Why do you think everyone else uses HDMI.
Mini DisplayPort - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The connector has nothing to do with what's transported on the wire. It's the lightpeak spec that allows video, audio, data, and power to run over the wire. Using a USB connector just means that the port would automatically have backward compatability with existing USB tech without requring a dongle. And even with mini-displayport, there's not a TV or monitor on the market not made by Apple that uses the mini-Display port, they all use HDMI, meaning you still have to have a dongle.
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DenverDrummer
New member
And just so you're clear, mini-Displayport is not the same thing as the Display Port standard which is a VESA industry standard. DisplayPort (VESA) is simply a standard which was meant to replace DVI and VGA, but it's pretty much dead in the water as HDMI is pretty much the industry standard for high definition because it can transport both audio and Video.
mini-DisplayPort is an Apple patent, it's owned by Apple, you have to pay Apple to use it, hence no one uses it but Apple.
mini-DisplayPort is an Apple patent, it's owned by Apple, you have to pay Apple to use it, hence no one uses it but Apple.
PRHunt
I void warranties
Not to disagree here, but I have just bought a brand new Asus motherboard (a socket 1155 mobo for a i7 2600k) and it has a firewire header on board. Just saying firewire may be on the decline, but its not dead yet.