Firewire or PCI??

[tamky]

So when all is said, which one is better? Keeping in mind...
1. Latency issues
2. Speed
3. Compatability
4. the Future

I have seen several Firewire products that include the basic 3 of interfacing, i.e., preamp, phantom power and soundcard, but I have yet to be able to find a PCI interface that does all three. Did I miss something?

 

[dgatwood]

So when all is said, which one is better? Keeping in mind...
1. Latency issues
2. Speed
3. Compatability
4. the Future

1. Latency issues: given properly designed gear, nearly identical.

2. Speed: given properly designed gear, nearly identical.

3. Compatibility: I think you'd be less likely to have problems with IRQ conflicts with a FireWire device. Otherwise, nearly identical.

4. The future: PCI is being phased out in favor of PCI Express (PCIe), which isn't compatible with PCI cards. It's hard to predict the future, but here's my take:

In the most -optimistic- scenario, you'll have trouble finding high-end new hardware with PCI slots in under ten years. (PCIe to PCI expansion chassis exist, but that's in the "I own a Digi system" price range.)

In the most -pessimistic- scenario, if FireWire were replaced with something incompatible tomorrow, you could still buy a FireWire card for PCI Express (available now) and use it to drive that FireWire device for the next 15-20 years.

It's also much more likely that there would be FireWire interfaces available for whatever technology replaced PCI Express, since it costs a lot less to design an adapter for an external peripheral bus than to design one for an internal card slot technology. (With a little effort, you could still attach a parallel printer to a PCIe-only computer. Try adapting an ISA card.)

I have seen several Firewire products that include the basic 3 of interfacing, i.e., preamp, phantom power and soundcard, but I have yet to be able to find a PCI interface that does all three. Did I miss something?

No, you're not missing anything. Audio hardware vendors began abandoning PCI years ago. FireWire gives you a lot of noise immunity for a lot less effort than with PCI, is easier for users to install, and has similar performance and reliability. Most of the PCI gear that is left these days is either gamer (Soudblaster) grade crap or is based on technology that's a couple of generations old.

There are exceptions---the Layla 3G, the Delta 666 , etc.---but the prices are close enough to FireWire that I can't see the point.

 

[ocnor]

1. Latency issues: given properly designed gear, nearly identical.
2. Speed: given properly designed great, nearly identical.

There is quite a large difference in speed.http://www.mobl.com/expansion/products/comparison/comp_speed.html

 

[dgatwood]

There is quite a large difference in speed.http://www.mobl.com/expansion/products/comparison/comp_speed.html

I thought the comparison was between a PCI audio interface and a FireWire audio interface in terms of speed, not between the busses themselves. IMHO, the raw throughput of the bus is largely irrelevant.

For the purposes of an audio interface, the only thing that should matter is whether it is fast enough to keep up. FireWire 400 can handle approximately 91 simultaneous channels at 192kHz/24 bit.

Oh, and oops. That was a typo. I meant to type "given properly designed gear".

 

[ocnor]

I came across this article. It has some pretty interesting stuff in it about busses .http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_audio_pipeline/

 

[tamky]

I thought the comparison was between a PCI audio interface and a FireWire audio interface in terms of speed, not between the busses themselves. IMHO, the raw throughput of the bus is largely irrelevant.

For the purposes of an audio interface, the only thing that should matter is whether it is fast enough to keep up. FireWire 400 can handle approximately 91 simultaneous channels at 192kHz/24 bit.

Oh, and oops. That was a typo. I meant to type "given properly designed gear".

dgatwood - Thanks much for your info and insight. Looks like Firewire is the way to go. Good, becuz as I said, I would like to buy a unit that incorporates the soundcard/interface, mic pre-amp and Phantom Power all in one. Are there any you can recommend in the $300-$500 range. In truth, I will only be recording one instrument/vocal at a time. Plus I require midi in/out. Thanks in advance for any suggestions/recommendations.

My computer specs:
Mainboard
Bus(es) : AGP PCI IMB USB FireWire/1394 i2c/SMBus
System BIOS : Award Software International, Inc. F5
Mainboard : Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. 8IPE1000P2
Total Memory : 1.5GB DDR-SDRAM

Chipset 1
Model : Giga-Byte Technology 82865G/PE/P, 82848P DRAM Controller / Host-Hub Interface
Front Side Bus Speed : 4x 101MHz (404MHz data rate)
Total Memory : 1.5GB DDR-SDRAM
Memory Bus Speed : 2x 168MHz (336MHz data rate)

Physical Storage Devices
Removable Drive : Floppy disk drive
Hard Disk : QUANTUM FIREBALLP AS20.5 (19GB)
Hard Disk : WDC WD1200JB-75CRA0 (112GB)
CD-ROM/DVD : LG CD-RW CED-8080B (CD 32X Rd, 8X Wr)
CD-ROM/DVD : CD-ROM Drive

Operating System(s)
Windows System : Microsoft Windows XP/2002 Professional (Win32 x86) 5.01.2600 (Service Pack 2)

 

[altiris]

You may want to check out the firepod. Its got what you want for the price range.

 

[tamky]

You may want to check out the firepod. Its got what you want for the price range.

Thanks all for the input.
altiris - and is it safe to assume, if I don't need all those i/o's, that the PreSonus FIREBOX 24-bit/96kHz FireWire Recording System will suffice with all the capabilities of the Firepod (except for the amount of i/o's)?

 

[dgatwood]

I came across this article. It has some pretty interesting stuff in it about busses .http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_audio_pipeline/

I skimmed it, and... well... it's half right.

FireWire != DV. DV is a type of tape format, or the digital video format therein. I'm not aware of any manufacturer that uses the word DV when they really mean FireWire (as this article claims)....

It's also wrong about PCI vs. FireWire with respect to needing additional stages of buffering. There's no extra buffering. I don't know where they got that, but it's utter crap. There's no more buffering there than going through any PCI-to-PCI bridge....

The comparison for DigiLink is a little silly, since it's possible to hang that off a FireWire bus just as easily (and they do). The low latency audio data passing has to do with all the work being done in specialized hardware, not with what bus it hangs off of. Yet they use this to dis FireWire's latency.

Then they go on to compare FireWire versus SCSI and talk about the potential for other devices clogging the FireWire bus, claiming that SCSI doesn't suffer from this problem. This is wrong for three reasons: 1. FW is faster than any single drive---if you're doing RAID, that's a different story, of course. 2. You can hang lots of other stuff off a SCSI bus. 3. The SCSI controller is on a PCI bus, which may be shared with another PCI device, which could even be a FireWire card!

Then, they proceed to quote blanket statements that FireWire can't ever hope to match the latency of PCI or PCIe. Well, they're probably right for PCI (by a few microseconds), but for PCIe, I would be really surprised if the opposite weren't true---a SCSI controller, probably attached through a PCIe->PCI bridge, attached to a PCIe bus, bridged to a HyperTransport bus... versus a FireWire controller bridged to HyperTransport.... You can see where their argument falls apart in a typical system....