 
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
|
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
70.181.190.237
In Reply to: RE: Is firewire still better than usb for audio ? posted by beppe61 on September 21, 2013 at 09:29:55
Without a doubt, the firewire interface has proven itself in profession applications. The problem is, that there doesn't seem to be any movement to improve the interface, and with USB 3, little enthusiasm from the industry for firewire advancements. But firewire is not going away.With the advent of USB Audio 2 support, OSX and Windows ( needs drivers ) works very well with USB 2 and 3 interfaces.
It appears that most of the high end manufacturers feel that the best sound from their products is with USB; at least the manufacturers I have worked with for review. Also, USB is now finding its way into DACs that support native DSD playback and DxD.
I have not had issues with USB reviewing a number of these DACs at AudioStream.
Edits: 09/21/13Follow Ups:
Thank you very much indeed for the kind and helpful reply.
I asked because of all this messages of problem with usb interfaces.
For instance I am amazed when I read that usb interfaces even on expensive dacs are bad designed/built. This is really surprising.
My explanation is that usb is maybe more difficult to implement rightly ?
I have another question by the way.
Sticking with usb, would a Mac mini be a better solution than a windows pc ?
Actually I was thinking to switch from a win7 pc to an Apple Mac mini in order to be able to use one old apogee card like the duet or similar (there are a lot of firewire cards on the used market).
Sorry but I am trying to understand the basic and to start with the right foot.
Thank you very much again
Regards,
beppe
None of the DACs I have reviewed at AudioStream have had USB interfaces that were badly designed.Today, excellent results can be had with Windows PCs or a Mac. I run OSX and Windows 8 with Boot Camp on a Mac for review purposes.
Many folks have great results with the CAPS PC designs from Chris at Computer Audiophile.
In the end, each OS has its supporters and both work well.
Edits: 09/21/13
Thank you very much again and now i am less pessimistic.
Clearly i was misunderstanding the real content of the discussions.
Kind regards,
beppe
It's all about optimism.
Enjoy
Good morning,
of course the right attitude would be to be realistic.
After all it is what i am looking for in the music as well.
Lately for instance i discovered some recordings from Ma Recordings label that amazed me for realism.
This feeling is beautiful. Even moving on the best equipment, i suppose.
Realistic would be the best i agree.
Being not very rational i tend to swing from optimism to pessimism.
Thank very much again and kind regards,
beppe
Firewire is slowly being replaced by Thunderbolt which is backwards compatible by means of a cheap adaptor cable.
Personally I never had any issues with even the original Firewire 400 streaming 12 channels bidirectionally (ie record and replay simultaneously) at 24/96. That's 24 channels via one cable.
USB on the other hand has so far been a complete nightmare since unlike FW it was not originally designed for continuous streaming.
For your purposes, you need more of a data storage bandwidth capability, firewire and Thunderbolt are faster. With USB 3, I haven't seen any issues with a USB disk drive over the network to a Squeezebox. Once in a great while, if I search for something on the Touch when I've just started it up, I might get a drop out for a second or 3. It's hard to say if that's a server issue, drive interface or whatever.
When talking about terminal response, IBM used to say that it should be a blink of an eye. There's no real advantage in doing it in a half a blink.
-Rod
Thanks a lot for the interesting information.
But the best equipment designed for the pro sector do still use firewire as a standard or everyone is abandoning it in favour of usb 2.0 or 3.0 ?
I think that to know the choice of the "extreme" users is important in the end.
They want absolute quality and reliability I suppose.
For instance when the cd format was established the pros were not satisfied with it and instead they went for the superior 16bit/48kHz format Dat format.
I have the feeling that companies do not have a great esteem of consumers.
Thanks and regards,
beppe
Edits: 09/21/13 09/21/13 09/21/13
For a long time typical pro companies used firewire.
The RME Fireface (as you might have quessed) has a firewire interface.
However, recent products like Firewire UC offers USB.
http://www.rme-audio.de/en_products_overview_firewire.php
Same story with Apogee
The first Duet was firewire, the Duet2 is USB like most of their todays offerings.
http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/
I think industry is dropping Firewire.
A lot of USB problems are imho not USB problems seq but a matter of a PC with a high latency.
As USB audio is a quasi real-time stream, a high latency will result in dropouts.
On my HP laptop I never get the audio playing without dropouts (unless I disable the networking, a bit inconvenient as the audio is on a NAS)
On my iMac I don’t have this problem.
Both btw run Win7.
The Well Tempered Computer
I have a Lenova pc laptop using Jriver 18 and do nothing to shut down networking and I never get any dropouts even with DSD downloads. I have had no problems at all with USB 2.0
Alan
Thanks a lot for the advice.
You speak of "a PC with a high latency"
Is there a way to verify this latency ?
Maybe I could try a pci card with usb 3.0 in case ?
Thanks again and kind regards,
beppe
Sure, there are nice pieces of freeware like
http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon
http://www.thesycon.com/deu/latency_check.shtml
I recommend to be a bit careful with USB3
For audio you don’t need it (UAC2 uses high speed) and although USB3 is downwards compatible, you might hit some compatibility issues.
I suggest to use the available ports on your PC as a starter.
The Well Tempered Computer
Thank you very much for the links !
I am going to make some tests soon.
I am quite curious to see
Kind regards,
beppeDone with this
http://www.thesycon.com/deu/latency_check.shtmlcurrent latency around 60 us
absolute 101 usis it good ? must be better for good audio ?
Edits: 09/21/13
Perfect values, you won't have dropouts
The Well Tempered Computer
i will start to look at the other components then
Good to know that the source is usable
Kind regards,
beppe
Best
Vincent
The Well Tempered Computer
Quite frankly, as an end user, I have not experienced the USB "nightmare" with music playback.
Edits: 09/21/13 09/21/13
I used Firewire for a few years then switched over to USB, both on the Mac. I haven't had ANY issues with either. I'm not sure why some inmates complain about drop-outs and other bizarre glitches and the need to shut down services (like networking) to help resolve them.
Early USB devices (even very cheap ones) using UAC 1 could play redbook audio without dropouts on a garden variety PC with minimal attention to tuning the PC if needed. (Turning off or moderating the A/V software, turning off automatic Windows updates and a few other simple settings.)
Not a lot of hi-res. commercial recordings around in 2006/7/8. I'd say that USB audio has evolved nicely as interest in hi-res. and availability of material has evolved. There's still more interest than material.
Bill
my blog: http://carsmusicandnature.blogspot.com/
In the early days all of my files were just 16/44 rips from my personal CD collection and now I have a good handful of 24/96 but nothing bigger. I suppose those huge DSD or 24/192 files could stress a marginal system but they've gotten faster and more capable over the years. But if you cripple a perfectly good OS with unnecessary so-called tweaks, all bets are off. ;-)
I checked my collection. 64 files with 24 bit depth (44.1 and 96). A total of 3.6 GBytes.
When I buy music on eClassical.com or other download site that offers a choice of resolution, I consider whether having hi-res. is worth the extra cost. Sometimes eClassical.com offers the high res. version for the same price as the redbook version. And if you buy the hi-res. version there, you can also download the redbook and mp3 versions. So far, the hi-res. versions haven't improved my quality of life.
None of the recordings that really, really matter to me are available as hi-res. downloads. On the other hand, some favorite recrdings have been re-mastered and that made a real improvement.
Bill
my blog: http://carsmusicandnature.blogspot.com/
I would agree with the characterization of USB 1.1 being a nightmare for audio, but not USB 2.0.
USB 1.1 got a well deserved reputation as a POS, having marginal bandwidth for two channel audio at 96/24. (12 mbps) However, in 2000 the USB 2.0 specification came out and in the early 2000's USB 2.0 products went on the market. (480 mbps). This is more than enough bandwidth for audio, so if a system experiences dropouts it's due to some reason other than USB.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
USB 1.1 got a well deserved reputation as a POS, having marginal bandwidth for two channel audio at 96/24
Wonder why there is a bandwidth issue.
In case of USB at full speed every millisecond a package is send.
Maximum package size is 1024 bytes.
2 channel * 24 bit * 96000 Hz sample rate= 4608000 bits/s or 576 Byte/ms
This fits nicely in the 1024 byte limit.
The Well Tempered Computer
Unlike FW USB is not designed to sustain full bandwidth continuously.
USB was originally designed to conect keyboards, mice etc ie for short bursts of information but not streaming. FW was from the onset designed to stream video.
Another thing I like about FW is that it operates independently of the cpu
I was doing record monitoring: 2 channels in, 2 channels out, and that was too much. But in general, even if utilization is less than 100% there can still be scheduling problems if there are other things going on, unless one is using a proper real-time operating system with fancy scheduling.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
"Quite frankly, as an end user, I have not experienced the USB "nightmare" with music playback."
I have not either. I have never had any issues with USB. There are always exceptions, but I think it often comes down to user error or occasionally a compatibility issue. A non-dedicated audio system is less than ideal IMO and can often be the culprit.
regards
Bob
Post a Followup:
| FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2025, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
