Do PCI Firewire cards matter in quality?

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jbroad572

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I bought one from Best Buy for $40, but I don't want to keep it for that price. Just wanted to see if it fixed the problem. I see quite a few on Ebay pretty cheap. What do I want to look for when purchasing one or should I just take a pick?
 
Texas Instruments chipset. Most hardware manufactures reccomend these for music
 
I second the TI chipset recommendation.
But even then, your "real" ennemy, is Windows.
 
The firewire card chipset makes absolutely no difference to sound quality.

You are dealing with a digital signal and a digital signal suffers no degredation through transfer through USB,Firewire or any other interface.

I have to laugh at people that spend a small fortune on high end toslink cables for digital connections, its futile.

The only thing that may happen with a cable is noise pickup from environment that could be picked up by the computers ground.

A digital signal is a digital signal, it is not subject to change unless it is processed in some way by your equipment.
 
There is definately a reason to get quality digital cables. I agree that once the data gets there it is either a 0 or a 1. However, I like to guarantee that ALL of my 0's and 1's get there. I also feel good knowing that the slightest movement isn't going to break the integrity of my little 8 lane highway of 0's and 1's.
 
cortexx said:
The firewire card chipset makes absolutely no difference to sound quality.

You are dealing with a digital signal and a digital signal suffers no degredation through transfer through USB,Firewire or any other interface.

I have to laugh at people that spend a small fortune on high end toslink cables for digital connections, its futile.

The only thing that may happen with a cable is noise pickup from environment that could be picked up by the computers ground.

A digital signal is a digital signal, it is not subject to change unless it is processed in some way by your equipment.
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I agree with this.
But a good chipset helps to reduce dropouts caused by Windows shit and improves compatibility with the sound card itself.

At all costs...AVOID VIA firewire chipsets (and any other VIA chipset in general)
 
jbroad572 said:
I bought one from Best Buy for $40, but I don't want to keep it for that price. Just wanted to see if it fixed the problem. I see quite a few on Ebay pretty cheap. What do I want to look for when purchasing one or should I just take a pick?
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in sound quality, no. Computers process data, not audio information. I've learned a great deal from a Mr. Bob Katz about this very thing.

The main concern is just be able to handle whatever resolution you want to record in. For example, you can expect to play audio off an external firewire harddrive.

Maybe like 20-30 tracks of 24-bit 48khz files, sure no problem. But 100 plus tracks of 24-bit 192khz+ audio?! that's like "holy shit" in all capital letters.

So in that case, chipsets, ram, drive speeds, and capable data processing is important :).

I had some guy ask me the other day, "firewire is making my shit sound dull and all muffled. What gives, holy man?" and I replied, "dude, firewire can't make your shit sound dull...is the fact that you put a thick ass sock on all your mics that makes it sound dull". Plus considering he records in a garage with terrible acoustics and just all around poo poo gear. You get what you pay for.

Even if a bad as "mojo poo jave" 1600000 x 120 firewire PCI card was out there, it wouldn't even make a .000000001% difference in sound quality. So in our case, it should be free or worth .000000001% of a dollar.

I had talked about all that a long time ago on here. In digital, it's not really ram, harddrive speed, your chipset or your cpu power that make things sound "digital". It's things like poor A/D/A conversion and instable clocking that makes things sound "digital". Aside from the fact that digital is, well, "digital". :D


Things like cheeta drives (or giraffe drives...whatever they call em now) ,SCSI drives and all that bad ass data processing power come in handy for massive, high quality sessions.
 
So in that case, chipsets, ram, drive speeds, and capable data processing is important
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Now you are talking about the computer in general which i agree with but firewire is a standard that all firewire chipset manufacturers adhere to (or its not firewire). What many people don't realise is that firewire technology has a form of parity checking meaning that each packet of data has to pass a parity check (much like tcpip networking) if the parity check is wrong the recieving part of the chip rectifies the data to make it right there is no data drop out at all . All firewire interfaces are capable of transfering digital data at the same speed , the make of chipset is 100% irrelevant ( gotta love standards ). This means that you can rely on all firewire devices being able to interface with all firewire ports on all computers (it's even platform independant existing on both Mac and PC).

Thinking that your firewire cable or firewire chipset being able to alter the audio quality is about as likely as a Ediriol midi port sounding different to a MOTU midi interface, it cant , its not audio ;)

The only time i have had issues with firewire chipsets is when the firewire chipset does not like or is not compatible with the north/southbridge chipset on a mainboard. running an NEC firewire chipset on an Nforce 3 chipset board will cause issues , as will running an older via firewire chipset on an Intel 865pe mainboard chipset (not applicable if using the VT6306 or later chipset), as will running a TI firewire chipset on an early SIS for AMD manboard platform. :cool:
 
At all costs...AVOID VIA firewire chipsets (and any other VIA chipset in general)
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Sorry but that is not accurate, i dont like correcting people but from experience i can tell you that VIA make some very capable chip solutions for the PC , the KT800 chipset for AMD was hugely successful and was only over shadowed once the Nforce 4 chipset was released with its dual channel memory architecture.

Via chipset soundcards are in more computers as an onboard option than any other chipset. They offer up to 7.1 surround and are stable and trouble free for most home computer users.

Via release the Hyperion 4in1 drivers on a regular basis and constantly make improvements for both performance and compatibilty with both hardware and software.

Via north and Southbridge chisets run cooler than any other chipset lending themselves once again to very reliable computing. Infact most via chipsets dont require a heatsink or fan (more than you can say for intels current northbridge models or Nvidia for that matter).

;)
 
cortexx said:
Sorry but that is not accurate, i dont like correcting people but from experience i can tell you that VIA make some very capable chip solutions for the PC , the KT800 chipset for AMD was hugely successful and was only over shadowed once the Nforce 4 chipset was released with its dual channel memory architecture.

Via chipset soundcards are in more computers as an onboard option than any other chipset. They offer up to 7.1 surround and are stable and trouble free for most home computer users.

Via release the Hyperion 4in1 drivers on a regular basis and constantly make improvements for both performance and compatibilty with both hardware and software.

Via north and Southbridge chisets run cooler than any other chipset lending themselves once again to very reliable computing. Infact most via chipsets dont require a heatsink or fan (more than you can say for intels current northbridge models or Nvidia for that matter).
;)
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Well from my experience and according to some of my computer saavy friends, VIA is like the KIA of chipsets. I would never buy a damn thing from them again. They are cheaper, this is why most people use them. But like a KIA, you get what you pay for. Sure, the KIA will drive, but it's a shitty car nonetheless.
 
The older VIA chipsets did definately have some problems with certain hardware, but all of those problems seem to be resolved. Until 6 months ago I used VIA chipsets in all of my builds for about 4 years and never had any issues except for one specific motherboard with a MOTU PCI 324 card. My RME card never has had an issue. In fact, my latest motherboard uses the N Force 4 chipset. It does not seem to be perfect either even though it is a highly accepted chipset. I can't get my 4 channel midi interface to function properly, while my single channel one does fine.

Many people are succesfulyl using VIA chipsets to do their work, both audio and otherwise. To say that a person should avoid VIA chipsets at all costs definately seems like a misinformed statement. The last few years of VIA chipsets have been at the forefront of all of this type of technology, and generally have been solid and stable chipsets. Shoudl you run out and buy something because it has a VIA chipset? No. Should you not buy something because it does? Not unless you have specific cause to doubt it's performance.
 
I use a 4 Input Firewire Card made by Texas Instruments that I got off of E-Bay for $2.50 and it works Great with no problems at all even when useing all 4 Inputs at the same time.....These days any Firewire Card will work about as Good as any other One......

Cheers
 
Well from my experience and according to some of my computer saavy friends, VIA is like the KIA of chipsets. I would never buy a damn thing from them again. They are cheaper, this is why most people use them. But like a KIA, you get what you pay for. Sure, the KIA will drive, but it's a shitty car nonetheless.
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No disrespect to you but I base my post on solid fact ( i`m a full time computer tech that owns my own business and have been in the trade for 15 years ). In reality there are alot of well meaning but misinformed "computer savvy people" that are prepared to give an opinion (and that's all it is "opinion"), my own opinion is based on between 10-40 computers going through our workshops a day and we get to work with every combination of hardware imaginable.

Again in reality there is no guarantee that any hardware will work with any other piece of hardware, in the computer world there will always be plenty of incompatibilities and bugs , look at the access virus TI , a stand alone product that has more bugs than Anna Nichol-Smiths underware. And that is a finished (apart from the slew of firmware updates about to be released) product that can be considered standalone and theoretically should have no problems.

Via , Intel , Nvidia , SIS , SGS , Cyrix and recently even ATI have been making mainboard chipsets and there have always been bugs NEVER a flawless product. Do understand that VIA is by no means an inferior product to any of the others. If Via was that bad i'd happily agree with you.

Unfortunately you are wrong due to misinformed information given to you by well meaning but also misinformed friends :o
 
They are cheaper, this is why most people use them.
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Intel chipsets hmmmmm

i810 used in the cheapest dell junk for the longest time

Intel ZX and EX chipsets for P2/3 platform ( the cheapest machines again and also massively incompatible with larger hard drives ) prone to overheating.

Nvidia chipsets (more hmmm-ing)

Nvidia Nforce2 (good stable used in bargain games machines up intil about 2 years ago)

Nvidia Nforce3-150 (a horribly bugged stepup from the nforce 2 with terrible memory bandwidth)

Nvidia Nforce3-250 (what the 150 should have been, better performance but still lacking memory bandwidth)

SIS chipsets (laughs)

Come to think about it I don't think SIS have ever come out with a good motherboard chipset, semi-stable and blah performance. Not really selling features.

ATI (drumroll)

so much for the new ATI mainboard chipset , destined for the crossfire configuration to rival nvidias SLI technology but falls far far short in bench marks (when it actually works). Its back to the drawing board for ATI for the time being although to be fair this is their first attempt at a mainboard chipset.

VIA (apparently not worth the $29 for a firewire card)

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/server/svr/pro_svr_detail.php?UID=484

for such bad chipset they sure are being used for some pretty serious pieces of equipment ;)

Cant think of anything that needs to shout "stability and support" like a server mainboard. (we have used these boards in corporate networks being used as terminal services servers and they work greaaaaaat !! ;).

Of course i could be misinformed :o
 
The problem with Via chipsets was that they were slightly non-standard and most audio manufacturers didn't test their designs against them. MOTU is a case in point. After Via got a large market share, these same manufacturers began taking them (and others ) into account when designing their hardware.
 
The problem with Via chipsets was that they were slightly non-standard and most audio manufacturers didn't test their designs against them. MOTU is a case in point. After Via got a large market share, these same manufacturers began taking them (and others ) into account when designing their hardware.
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Yes this is true although the problem is usually drivers rather than the hardware itself. Personally I have never had an issue with my MOTU MTP AV and its been used with computers containing both via and nvida chipsets.

The best advice I can give with computer hardware is assume everything is to some extent incompatible with everything else . For many products there are no set standards and standards wars happen all the time in technology. (betamax and VHS come to mind as a clasic example).

As for MOTU , they leaned heavily towards MAC, and PC drivers for their hardware were aweful as i'm sure more than a few on here will testify to. It's only lately they have given as much effort to PC (or windows to be more precise) as the PC becomes more popular for musicians.
 
That may often be the case, but it is NOT the case with Motu PCI cards. These had to do SOLELY with hardware. The new version of their card (421) works, whereas the old (321) does not.

There may be drivers between 2 pieces of hardware, but there is not always driver translation code between two pieces of hardware.



cortexx said:
Yes this is true although the problem is usually drivers rather than the hardware itself. Personally I have never had an issue with my MOTU MTP AV and its been used with computers containing both via and nvida chipsets.

The best advice I can give with computer hardware is assume everything is to some extent incompatible with everything else . For many products there are no set standards and standards wars happen all the time in technology. (betamax and VHS come to mind as a clasic example).

As for MOTU , they leaned heavily towards MAC, and PC drivers for their hardware were aweful as i'm sure more than a few on here will testify to. It's only lately they have given as much effort to PC (or windows to be more precise) as the PC becomes more popular for musicians.
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My PCI 324 card worked perfectly with three different MSI motherboards that used a VIA chipset. It did not work at all on 1 of them (the third one that I had). I was far more upset with MOTU though than I was with my VIA chipset. Motu wanted me to pay to ship them my whole tower for 6 weeks so they could figure it out. Instead I opted to switch to RME. I have never looked back:)
 
That may often be the case, but it is NOT the case with Motu PCI cards. These had to do SOLELY with hardware. The new version of their card (421) works, whereas the old (321) does not.
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Which mainboard were you using and which pci slot did you plug it into ?
 
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