USB vs FireWire interfaces??

[ABBIBNevin]

After talking to a friend about how I was planning to buy a Tascam us-1641 interface to upgrade from my Line 6 Toneport, he replied by saying that 99% of USB interfaces sound the same and I should invest in FireWire instead.

Is there really that much of an advantage? And also I found it hard to believe that just being on USB made interfaces sound the same regardless of their preamps or convertors, so that's another reason why I came here to get some knowledge.

Now I'm torn between three interfaces: Tascam US-1641 USB interface, Presonus FP10 Firewire interface, and Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 Firewire interface. Each one is $100 more than the last but I couldn't find many reasons why they were, other than firewire is allegedly better than USB and the Saffire has gotten a lot of praise on these boards.

Basically I'd just like some guidance along the lines of, "No, firewire isn't that much better, and a tascam is going to improve your sound quality significantly from a Toneport anyways." or "Yes, firewire is going to sound much better for a few dollars more, go with the Presonus or Focusrite."

 

[NSGUITAR]

Get a Profire dude.. You won't regret it.. Great quality, and very affordable.


The highest advantage is latency.. you'll virtually have none with firewire, and I can say that the DI's are a tad bit cleaner than a usb interface as well (at least a line 6 one).

 

[C-Martin]

Depending on what your going to be using the interface for i would recommend different units. I would definitely take a Saffire pro 40 over the tascam or anything Presonus but that's IMO. I just can't bring myself to trust presonus with anything serious, i've had reliability issues with them. That said, i'm not saying they're bad interfaces, they're just not up to the level i need it to be for my use i guess.


Onto your direct question. No, whether it be USB, Firewire, PCI, Ethernet or whatever.. its not gonna affect the sound quality. Its just the way the interface transfers the digital data to your PC. It is only going to affect the latency which can be a huge deal if your dealing with bigger projects like recording drums with 16 inputs and so on. If your only going to be dealing with say 2 inputs then USB would work fine. What will affect the sound is the converters and the preamps and anything in the analog stage behind the hood of the interface. Saffire 40 has decent converters, good clean pre's and is a no brainer for me if you want cheap yet usable out of the box. Profire 2626 is nice too but i hate wall warts lol and its more expensive than the Saffire.

 

[HandsOfDespair]

Hey man, I compared the HI-Z inputs of my profire 2626 against the us-1641 of my friend a couple of days ago...the hi-z of the us-1641 sound like shit, so forget about this one. I could upload both DIs if you want.

 

[NSGUITAR]

Depending on what your going to be using the interface for i would recommend different units. I would definitely take a Saffire pro 40 over the tascam or anything Presonus but that's IMO. I just can't bring myself to trust presonus with anything serious, i've had reliability issues with them. That said, i'm not saying they're bad interfaces, they're just not up to the level i need it to be for my use i guess.


Onto your direct question. No, whether it be USB, Firewire, PCI, Ethernet or whatever.. its not gonna affect the sound quality. Its just the way the interface transfers the digital data to your PC. It is only going to affect the latency which can be a huge deal if your dealing with bigger projects like recording drums with 16 inputs and so on. If your only going to be dealing with say 2 inputs then USB would work fine. What will affect the sound is the converters and the preamps and anything in the analog stage behind the hood of the interface. Saffire 40 has decent converters, good clean pre's and is a no brainer for me if you want cheap yet usable out of the box. Profire 2626 is nice too but i hate wall warts lol and its more expensive than the Saffire.

What's a wall wart?

 

[NSGUITAR]

Nevermind.

 

[RedDog]

I should sig that. That was funny

 

[mattisfrommars]

What's a wall wart?

I think it's a power supply where the transformer is external to the device

 

[bryan_kilco]

In my experience, USB is noisier and not as clean sounding as Firewire. HUGE difference.

 

[ABBIBNevin]

Thanks for the info guys! Yeah, my friend has the profire 2626 and they're having troubles fixing the power supply at the moment haha.

HandsofDespair, are you saying you could upload tracks recorded with both of those interfaces? That'd be great.

I might be shit out of luck anyway, my laptop doesn't have a firewire port or an expresscard slot. Could i use a firewire to usb cable, or would that diminish the effectiveness?

 

[Trevoire520]

After talking to a friend about how I was planning to buy a Tascam us-1641 interface to upgrade from my Line 6 Toneport, he replied by saying that 99% of USB interfaces sound the same and I should invest in FireWire instead.

Bullshit. USB/Firewire has NOTHING to do with sound quality. It's just the way that the interface sends and receives data. Sound quality down to the analogue components in the interface (preamps & AD/DA converters)

Could i use a firewire to usb cable, or would that diminish the effectiveness?

There's no such thing as far as I'm aware. They're completely different protocols and not compatible with each other.

 

[C-Martin]

Trevoire sums up pretty much what i said. Whoever is telling you this information clearly has no idea wtf he's talking about so i would avoid that source for any serious advice if i we're you.


As for the Firewire to USB thing.. you could probably get a firewire to usb adapter but why the hell you would even think of doing that is beyond me. The adapter alone would probably cost as much as a firewire PCI card. I have no idea this would affect the performance, since i never tried it or even heard of someone doing this. My guess is you would have stability issues, you'd basically end up with a firewire interface trying to shove information down a USB bottleneck. It might not even work at all since the interface in question would be designed and tested to work with firewire and not USB.

 

[thefyn]

I just got a USB 3 PC.

Are there any USB 3 plans for audio interfaces on the horizon.

 

[Flow Of Time]

Sorry for bumping this old thread, but I didn't want to start a new one just for a little question :
Does a firewire interface have any disadvantages?
In this thread it seems like there's no reason to get a USB interafce (if you have a firewire port).
I don't need to record multiple tracks, so USB should be good enough, but if the latency is lower on firewire interfaces...

 

[MurderMachine]

Does a firewire interface have any disadvantages?
In this thread it seems like there's no reason to get a USB interafce (if you have a firewire port).
I don't need to record multiple tracks, so USB should be good enough, but if the latency is lower on firewire interfaces...

As stated earlier in the thread, there is seriously no audible difference between USB and FireWire, what it comes down to is the hardware inside of the interface. When you refer to latency, can I assume that you're refering to the buffer size? Again, audibly it doesn't matter what the difference is there (even though a FireWire one probably has the option of setting a lower latency, plenty of USB interfaces have low latency options too, but I've never found a use for it in either of them).

The way I see it: better shit just comes with FireWire. If you get an interface with multiple I/O's and decent preamps, chances are it'll be FireWire anyway. If you're recording just one track, it really doesn't matter if you're using USB or FireWire, it just comes down to the hardware in the interface and how well you need that to process your sound. If you're just doing DI's, don't worry about it. If you want a nice preamp on your vocals, just buy a separate preamp and use that with your interface, as you'll find most preamps in interfaces are pretty damn transparent until you get up to the expensive stuff.

 

[Flow Of Time]

Thanks for your answer.
I want to use my 6505 trough an impulse response
But I think I don't judge by the connection method then.

 

[Sloan]

FireWire is much more appropriate than USB for audio and video data transfers due to its isochronous data-transfer mode. While USB transfers data in packets, much like Ethernet, FireWire’s isochronous mode allows data to be streamed continuously, which is much more appropriate and efficient for multichannel audio data and for video. Also, USB uses the host CPU to manage the low-level USB protocol, whereas FireWire relies on the interface hardware to manage that, so FireWire requires little or no CPU power.

The only real disadvantage with firewire is that it is being phased out in mainstream tech for protocols like USB3/Thunderbolt...
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may11/articles/pc-notes-0511.htm

 

[Flow Of Time]

The only real disadvantage with firewire is that it is being phased out in mainstream tech for protocols like USB3/Thunderbolt...
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may11/articles/pc-notes-0511.htm

Well, my pc neither has usb 3.0 nor thunderbolt and I won't be upgrading my machine in the nearer future so this wouldn't be a problem
So just to sum this up:
Will I achive a lower buffer size while recording with a firewire interface?

 

[Sethis]

Yes. But you wont hear the difference unless you get a better brain as well.

Also, latency only matters when you wanna hear what you're playing through your monitors, for example with amp sims. If you're micing it doesn't matter at all.

 

[neptunian]

The newer generation of USB 2.0 interfaces equal or exceed the performance of the old Firewire devices. This is due to faster CPUs in modern PCs, better USB 2.0 chips, more efficient preamp chips, and better drivers.

So if you got even a Roland Quad Capture, for example, you won't be missing much in terms of latency versus Firewire since it's a well designed USB 2.0 interface. But if you need max track count for lowest cost, then an older Firewire unit will serve you better, especially if you have an older PC since Firewire, unlike USB, does not place much additional load on the CPU to send data.

In your case, if I only needed one or two simultaneous inputs, I'd get smaller interface that is newer and better quality for the same price. That said, of the ones you listed I'd go with the Pro 40 over the others, definitely over the Tascam.