firewire vs usb soundcard

  • Thread starter Thread starter SheHadTheJack
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SheHadTheJack

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Hi
is there a difference between firewire and usb soundcards ... latency, quality...something. The firewire cards seems a bit more expensive.
 
Well here are the specs for both:

USB 2.0

1. 1.5 Mbit/s 12Mbit/s 480Mbit/s supported.
2. USB controller is required to control the bus and data transfer.
3. Cable up to 5 m.
4. Up to 127 devices supported.
5. Power supply to external devices is 500 mA/5V (max).
6. Full compatibility with USB 1.1 devices.

FireWire (IEEE1394)

1. 100 Mbit/s 200Mbit/s 400Mbit/s supported.
2. Works without control, devices communicate peer-to-peer.
3. Cable up to 4.5 m.
4. Up to 63 devices supported.
5. Power supply to external devices is 1.25A/12V (max.).
6. The only computer bus used in digital video cameras.

How that translates into the real world is going to be based on each product I guess. From my experience USB 2 is less finicky
 
SheHadTheJack said:
Hi
is there a difference between firewire and usb soundcards ... latency, quality...something. The firewire cards seems a bit more expensive.
Click to expand...

Short answer: USB takes significantly more CPU overhead and is more sensitive to available CPU horsepower.

FireWire is unreliable when you have a sucky FireWire card, a poorly designed audio interface, badly-written drivers, or an IRQ conflict with the FireWire card.

USB is also unreliable when any of the above are true. USB tends to be less reliable than FireWire near the maximum bus bandwidth, when there are two devices from the same manufacturer, or when CPU load approaches 100%.
 
Firewire places less of a load on the system (as previously mentioned). Although on paper USB2 is faster than Firewire, real world tests have shown that Firewire is faster in actual use scenarios.
 
Shorter version:

USB was designed for keyboards and mouses.
Firewire was designed for audio/video and to replace SCSI.

(I use a Motu828mkII firewire for audio and a MidisportUSB for MIDI - zero problems)
 
Last edited:
TimOBrien said:
Shorter version:

USB was designed for keyboards and mouses.
Firewire was designed for audio/video and to replace SCSI.
Click to expand...

I dont know a lot about computers, but that was my general thinking when I bought a firewire audio interface (m-audio). I use USB for midi.
 
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