What sort of latency can I expect from a Firewire audio interface? I
will be working with midi. Also will audio processing be lagged to the
speed of Firewire? I guess what Im saying is would buying anything
faster than a 3Ghz processor really make a difference?

Firewire is not a bottle neck at all for audio. When you consider that
audio streams are measured in Kbps and even first generation firewire runs
at 400 Mbps, lagging is not an issue. Your best case latency, depending on
your driver model (MME/ASIO/WDM/GSIF) should be down to 1 to 3 ms. I don't
know if you are going PC or Mac, but if it's PC, just make sure that the
Firewire implimentation has the FW supported directly off the chipset and
not a 3rd party solution hanging internally off the PCI bus. Any high speed
interface, whether it be FW, USB2, SATA, Gbit Ethernet, etc requires more
bandwidth than traditional PCI can offer. As a result the PCI bus gets
saturated, which is *very* bad for audio. The number of host based
real-time effects your system can run (or host based soft-synths for that
matter) will be directly proportional to the speed of your processor. The
speed of the bus to your audio card really has no influence on this.

Bill.



"donaldjcecil" wrote in message
news:Qk4ve.840$ro.596@fed1read02...
What sort of latency can I expect from a Firewire audio interface? I will
be working with midi. Also will audio processing be lagged to the speed of
Firewire? I guess what Im saying is would buying anything faster than a
3Ghz processor really make a difference?

On Tue, 28 Jun 2005 01:23:34 +1200, "Bill Ruys"
wrote:

Any high speed
interface, whether it be FW, USB2, SATA, Gbit Ethernet, etc requires more
bandwidth than traditional PCI can offer.

So would you recommend an external soundcard via on-chip Firewire over
a pci audio card?

In article writes:

Firewire is not a bottle neck at all for audio. When you consider that
audio streams are measured in Kbps and even first generation firewire runs
at 400 Mbps, lagging is not an issue.

The pipeline may not be a bottleneck, but drivers are what drive the
througput. Some are better than others.

There are also unexpected quirks, particularly when adding a Firewire
audio interface to a system that's been around for a while. Few people
have a completely troublefree plug-and-play-well experience.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Laurence Payne wrote:
On Tue, 28 Jun 2005 01:23:34 +1200, "Bill Ruys"
wrote:


Any high speed
interface, whether it be FW, USB2, SATA, Gbit Ethernet, etc requires more
bandwidth than traditional PCI can offer.


So would you recommend an external soundcard via on-chip Firewire over
a pci audio card?

Doesn't really matter, either perform very well. I can daisy chain 2
motu 896's and a firewire drive off of one firewire connection from my
lacie card without problem (computer - motu - motu - drive).
That's 16 channels of 24/44.1 audio flying around to the computer then
to the drive. And like someone else mentioned, a faster processor allow
for lower latencies when monitoring through your software. Combined I/O
latency on my system is generally around 4-6ms (3ms input latency and
3ms output latency).

Just a side-note, be sure to test your system's performance with Intel's
Hyperthreading On, versus off (if you have an intel CPU that is). DAWs
generally run MUCH better with hyperthreading off.

Roach

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 16:09:18 -0400, Mike Rocha
wrote:

DAWs
generally run MUCH better with hyperthreading off.

An interesting statement. I agree that HT seems incompatible with
some programs. But given a system with no incompatibilities, you say
that turning off HT gives better performance?

There is nothing wrong with having a PCI audio card, just as long as nothing
badly behaved is sharing the PCI bus.

I would go with the solution that suits you best in regards to no of
channels, quality of converters, portability (this may be an advantage of FW
over PCI), etc.

Bill.

"Laurence Payne" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 28 Jun 2005 01:23:34 +1200, "Bill Ruys"
wrote:

Any high speed
interface, whether it be FW, USB2, SATA, Gbit Ethernet, etc requires more
bandwidth than traditional PCI can offer.

So would you recommend an external soundcard via on-chip Firewire over
a pci audio card?

"SjT" wrote:
--
I'm the only gay in this groupage



How do you know? Has everyone else declared their hetero-ousity?

I'd probably be gay too, but for the fact that I just can't get past
being sexually attracted to women instead of men. My gay friends insist
that it's a deal breaker.

--
"It CAN'T be too loud... some of the red lights aren't even on yet!"
- Lorin David Schultz
in the control room
making even bad news sound good

(Remove spamblock to reply)

"Lorin David Schultz" wrote in message

I'd probably be gay too, but for the fact that I just can't get past being
sexually attracted to women instead of men. My gay friends insist that
it's a deal breaker.

I am a reasonably happy chap.

geoff

Lorin David Schultz wrote:
"SjT" wrote:
--
I'm the only gay in this groupage

How do you know? Has everyone else declared their hetero-ousity?

I'd probably be gay too, but for the fact that I just can't get past
being sexually attracted to women instead of men. My gay friends insist
that it's a deal breaker.

It's the breasts that do it. I can see being attracted to men, but I
can't imagine not being attracted to breasts.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."