USB vs. FIREWIRE

im still a little confused about this topic...i keep hearing firewire soundcards are more stable than USB soundcards, but i haven't heard any real reasons yet. can someone clarify this for me, pros/cons of each, etc.? i'm thinking of getting a USB card for my laptop cuz its cheaper, but everyone says to stay away from USB. help me out! peace

I think fire wire is faster, but I cant see why you would have many more problems witha USB 2.0 connect, USB is still pretty fast

I don't know about usb 2.0 but normal usb is not fast enough for more than 4 channels of audio at a time. I would get firewire.

firewire!!

firewiree got a constant flow of date transfer!

now with the new firewire800 (800mbps!!!!!) usb2.0 is nothing compared to that (480mbps)

1. Firewire has more error correction/checking in the data transfer.

2. If you are sending data between 2 machines then USB uses the computer as a "middle man" for the data transfer while firewire transfers it directly to the other machine without using the computer as a "middle man". This means the data transfer is faster with firewire, even though USB 2.0 and firewire 400 almost has the same speed spec's.

3. You can connect up to 60+ devices with firewire.

4. If you use optical cables firewire can handle transfers through loooooong cables. +100 meters. That means you can have the computer and other stuff that makes noise in a seperate room and just controlling the stuff via the studio.

Oh and firewire can handle much more speed, in the future its supposed to be able to handle up to 1000mbit.

All in all firewire kills usb 1 & 2 =)

Kalei

there are usb 1 and usb 2.
there are two different firewires too.

u can use usb 1 on a usb2 port but not the other way around.

firewire is faster but you really dont need the speed of those. there are not many firewire interfaces out there yet compared to usb and usb is sufficient for most uses. just look if they come with an ASIO driver. that is very, very important. then you will have no problems with latency and everything works flawless, even if it is usb 1.

emagic got an interface which has 2 ins and 6 outs plus digital ports and everything works with ASIO drivers on a USB 1 port.

Wire........ Fire!!!!!!

USB is fine for MIDI, but if you want any a decent audio interface you have to have firewire or USB 2. The only USB 2 audio interface I know of is Edirol's UA-1000. The spec for the UA-1000 sounds pretty good, but with an MSRP of over $900 I'd go for the cheaper (firewire) MOTU 828mkII, which has twice the inputs.