AUDIO INTERFACE : USB vs FIREWIRE

[slideboardouts]

For your audio interface, definitely go with firewire over USB. In the specs, USB is supposedly faster than FW but in the real world USB 2.0 doesn't even get anywhere near FW400 speeds. Its a total joke.

For a midi controller or a mouse USB is fine, but I definitely wouldn't use it for something as important and integral to your studio as an audio interface.

-Steve

[mhoward]

I'm using an old MBox and it only has USB. I haven't had problems with it per se, but I do know that Pro Tools doesn't support external USB disk drives for audio. After digging into the reasons I learned that the problem with USB (at least on Windows, but wouldn't be shocked it it applied to Apple) is that it was originally intended for peripheral devices and so the operating system doesn't prioritize USB events like it does other IO (disk reads/writes). So long story short, if you are trying to write data across USB (or read data from a USB device) and the OS also needs to do some other low-level system task then the USB request will be delayed. Millisecond delays are fine for a mouse or keyboard, but killer for recording audio. So even though USB can transfer data as fast as firewire doesn't mean that the data will be processed as fast as it can be transferred - something that probably applies as much to an A/D interface as it does to a disk drive. So I'd stick with firewire if at all possible.

Along those lines - I'm shopping for a new interface... thinking about tracking in Ableton and maybe just do my mixing in Pro Tools. I could just upgrade to the newer MBox but I feel like for the money I could get something that probably sounds much better. Does anyone here have experience with both the newer MBox and Apogee Duet or MOTU mk3?

[mojobone]

RME is well-regarded. I'd stick with FireWire.