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Sound cards: PCI vs. Firewire


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So, I'm in the market for a new pro/semi-pro soundcard and with all the research I've done, I can't seem to decide what I'm better off with, a firewire unit or a breakout unit that connects to a PCI card.

Anyone know if there's a major or minor difference in reliability? latency issues? CPU overload? anything to take into consideration one way or another?

I know PCI is going out sometime in the future (not sure how soon) and PCIe is coming, but how soon and does it really matter? Like, will we see PCIe pro soundcards within the next year? I'm guessing not, but I don't know.

Well, anyways. I'm looking at either the Echo Layla 3G or the Echo Audiofire 8. I welcome any other suggestions as well from experienced pro card users.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

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my Echo MIA is very reliable and I have a latency of 2ms

Good deal! I'm hearing mostly good things about Echo products lately.

Wow, great find there. That's definitely some interesting insight. I wonder what other audio card companies think of PCIe now.

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If you're worried about PCI going out of style; USB or Firewire.

I know Ailsean uses/used the Echo Mia as well, and always highly recommended it. I'm pretty sure Virt uses the Layla as well, not positive though.

Those things are 5 years old :(. Nice if you can find 'm secondhand, but that's pretty much an eternity in computerland.

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well here's one man's story:

like you, i had heard good thing about Echo's audio interfaces. the Delta44 i had was OK but i needed more. so i went out to my local music store and bought Echo's top-of-the-line rack unit, which like all their other products was PCI.

i gleefully returned home with my new toy and proceeded to install the PCI card in my computer. hmm.. now my computer won't turn on! i take out the PCI card. now my computer works. i put the PCI card back in. hmm... no dice.

turns out the PCI card is not compatible with my motherboard. i sadly returned the Echo to my local music store and came home with a MOTU 828, which was Firewire. a firewire audio interface? this was unheard of at the time. i had my doubts, but i figure it could do no worse.

i was pleasantly surprised. it worked fantastic. and continued working great for over 5 years. it worked great on my PC, great on my laptop, and great on my Mac. how's that for reliability?

i'm not suggesting you'll run into the same motherboard problems i had, it's just part of the story of how i've come to like firewire.

as for latency, 2ms is a piece of cake. i less than that on my Mac.

but sure, firewire isn't all rainbows and sunshine. maybe someone else has a story about how an Onyx 400 tried to kill their family and a brave EMU 0404 came to their rescue. exciting!

cheers.

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Well, it seems like somewhat of a crapshoot then as far as compatibility goes. That is unless I do a lot of research and find out if what I'm about to purchase is compatible with all of my computer's components. Even then you never know until you try something out, right?

With that in mind, does anyone know if zzounds or other online retailers offer returns with no hassles if their customers discover that the equipment they bought and tried out simply isn't compatible with their setup?

I'm leaning towards going with the Audiofire 8, but I'm not 100% on it yet. Argh, decisions.

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I got my new comp now, and I can currently get what basically equates to 0 ms latency. :D Running at 96kHz sample rate, with a 64 sample buffer, the latency is under 1 ms. For example Reason just rounds it off to 0. However, to get more overhead, I keep it at 48kHz and 128 samples, which is a bit less than 2 ms. ;)

Here's the specs in case anyone cares:

M-Audio Audiophile 2496

Asus P5NSLI motherboard

Core 2 Duo E6400

2 GB 533MHz DDR 2 (Corsair, I believe)

Seagate 320 GB SATA 3Gb/s 7200 RPM with 16MB cache

MSI GeForce 7600 GT (fanless / heatsink)

Nexus Breeze, 500 watt PSU

LG DVD-RW

So, basically, the Audiophile 2496 works brilliantly for me despite the PCI-E based nForce 5 chipset motherboard.

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the human ear can only detect around 11ms of delay.

Where did you get this information? I'm far from having a perfect ear, but the delay when I'm playing my guitar at 10ms is too distracting for me to stay in time.

-steve

I've just been told and read about it different times. Still, if you take into account the Haas Zone, lag isn't perceptible until around 50 ms. Sound is either reinforced or phased out below that level. I can't remember which delay times pertain to each aspect.

However, being that there's pretty much only one sound source (your speakers, headphones, whatever) if you're playing electric, and not 2 seperate waves (inital and delay), maybe it's more perceptible.

Maybe your computer is introducting latency not represented by your DAW? Or maybe i'm just wrong.

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the haas effect only applies to reverb/indirect sound. not really a good example.

the 11ms is fairly accurate though. here's an experiment you guys can do at home:

1. take a sharply percussive sound and make a click-track with it.

2. grab a delay effect that lets you fine-tune the delay in ms. (like mda dubdelay)

3. put the delay on the track, 0 ms, no feedback, mix it in at 50%

4. play the clicktrack sequence and gradually move the delay up to 10, 15, 20 ms.. etc.

you'll notice it just sounds phased from 0-15ms, yet from 20 and above you will hear a noticeable flam. or something like that.

also be aware that the latency figures that your audio driver tells you apply to.. your audio driver. it does not account for whatever audio software you are running on top of it. if you think you're actually getting 2ms latency -- think again. your recording software is probably adding 10ms to that.

your actual latency depends on several factors.

cheers.

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Maybe your computer is introducting latency not represented by your DAW? Or maybe i'm just wrong.

Actually, that's right. Analoq went into some detail on this, but it makes sense that your audio card isn't reporting the latency between its in port and your speakers, but the latency between its in port and the PCI bus (or wherever it connects).

So real latency for me might be soundcard + DAW + effects + signal path to speakers + distance I'm standing from the computer while I play, which explains why the sound from my finger hitting a string ~2 feet from my ear would hit my ear so much sooner than the sound from the speakers does, at least at latencies higher than 10ms or so.

There's also the (probably negligible) latency of the signal going from my pickups through the 20' cord before it even hits the soundcard to consider, too. :)

-steve

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