AES Card vs. Firewire

[BobbyBalow]

I'm looking to upgrade my current interface (firepod) with something like the rme fireface or the lynx aurora. I've noticed that I can go with a firewire setup or install a pci or pci-e card and connect the interfaces that way. I was wondering what the differences between the two were. I'd imagine that you would have much higher bandwidth using the aes card vs the firewire card. Does this also reduce latency? Anyone have any experience with these things? Thanks for your help guys!

 

[dementedchord]

i think the aes would be more stabile...

 

[dgatwood]

There's a slightly higher latency with FireWire. Beyond that, the differences are generally ignorable.

In the long term, a bus like FireWire is probably a better choice because the bus can used with anything from desktops to laptops, and also because when PCIe gets replaced by FuBarBus in 10-15 years, you're more likely to see cheap cards that provide FireWire than cheap breakout boxes that provide PCIe slots.

On the flip side, if you're planning to do something insane (32+ channels of recording), PCIe is likely to be better able to cope.