Firewire or USB 2.0

[PeterSchakel]

I'm buying a multimix 8 for recording at home, but there are 2 versions, the usb 2.0 version and the firewire version, I read on the internet that firewire is capeable of transferring date faster than USB.

So what would you guys recomment, buying the USB 2.0 version or the Firewire version with a Firewire PCI card?

 

[trikero]

if spending some extra bucks on a firewire card doesnt matter, id go with that. while usb 2.0 can have a marginally faster data rate, firewire is much better suited for recording applications.

 

[Matt885]

USB 2.0 is actually faster than firewire but only by 80Mbps(Megabytes Per Second)

Firewire is 400Mbps
USB 2.0 is 480Mbps

I have the M-Audio project mix control which is firewire and it works fine. It depends on how many ports you have. If you only have 2 usb and 1 firewire u might want to use firewire so u have usb for exterbal hardrives and whatever. Either way, I think both usb 2.0 and firewire are both fine.

 

[guitar zero]

Even though firewire is marginally slower, the firewire takes some computing load off of your CPU so that in the end, it's really better for recording applications which can be CPU intensive, when you're recording multiple tracks. If you have the cash, get firewire. If not, and you're only going to record a couple channels at a time, USB will work fine for you.

 

[TimOBrien]

USB 2.0 is actually faster than firewire but only by 80Mbps(Megabytes Per Second)

Firewire is 400Mbps
USB 2.0 is 480Mbps

Ahhhhh.... no.
That's like saying a 3Ghz P4 is faster than a 2.2Ghz quad-core PC...

USB is a little tiny garden hose; firewire is a big honkin' fire hose.

USB will to 480mbps in BURSTS and hogs the CPU bus.
Firewire was designed from the ground up to do massive SUSTAINED transfers for video and audio.
And its peer-to-peer so your interface will stream data directly to a daisy-chained firewire drive without hitting your CPU.

Firewire400 has the bandwidth to do several HUNDRED simultaneous audio streams.
Thats more than a single 7200rpm hard drive can handle.
Firewire800 swamps that (and they've just approved Firewire1600 and Firewire3200).

Right now on FW400 you can, for example, gang 3 Motu interfaces together for 60 simultaneous ins and outs.
Try to find a USB interface that does more than 4 or 8.....