Computer Audio Asylum

Music servers and other computer based digital audio technologies.

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RE: "both USB and Firewire have been over hyped."

Posted by rick_m on July 2, 2011 at 10:17:55:
Although my computer has a FireWire port I've never used it. However USB in it's current state of development is fabulous compared to where we were. To the user it is usually plug and play, these are halcyon days!

I've got perfectly good perherials that I can't use because the SCSI card won't fit in the bus sockets. And it's been quite a while since I've had to figure out what interrupts to use!

I used to design stuff that interfaced via RS-232 or keyboard wedge and in a word both sucked. Neither interface was designed for general usage yet they were the only ones typically available. From a manufacturer's viewpoint there is nothing worse than fleeting interfaces and despite a rocky start USB has been pleasingly long-lived with good support for legacy products.

Obviously the technical problems for audio use are solveable as they largely have been and it could get even easier with a little driver standardization and specialized silicon. For one thing with the higher speed versions it's becoming practical to do large dumps almost instantly allowing the play process to occur completely within the peripheral.

Your belief that adequate isolation should occur at the interface is spot on. There are already some damn good implementations and they wouldn't cost much in volume. It seems inevitable to me that stereos will ultimately cease to exist physically except for speakers as rendering nodes on an RF (or optical) network. At that point, galvanic isolation will be intrinsic.

Rick