Schiit DACs (Bifrost and Gungnir down, one to go)? The information and anticipation thread. - Page 29

Firewire: too small of a market.

Understood, but there's still plenty of pro audio interfaces that use firewire and many believe that when using a USB external HDD for an active music library that the DAC shouldn't be connected to USB as well. I just thought that if it was relatively cheap and easy that it could be an interesting option since the module is replaceable/swappable.

How come?  I don't do it that way, it's all internal HDD for me but out of curiosity why is it a bad thing.  I've heard of people talking about hearing the drive clicking but that would be an issue for internals too.

Internal is better because it's an SATA interface not USB, but it's still inadvisable to have your music stored on the system boot drive no matter what.

In answer to your question, it's because they share the same bus if they are both using USB; the Pure Music website for example advised this:

"It's best to choose the hard drive(s) after choosing the computer and audio interface. The reason is that whatever connection "bus" is used by the audio interface, the storage interface should be different for best performance. For example, USB hard drives should be used with a FireWire audio interface, and vice versa. This is to avoid bus contention issues from occurring, because the audio stream is a real-time stream that cannot be interrupted. Theoretically, it is possible to daisy-chain hard drives with audio on a FireWire bus... but this is not advisable."

Also from Wikipedia:

"FireWire interfaces generally outperform similar transfers over USB 2.0 interfaces in real world environments....For example, the FireWire host interface supports memory-mapped devices, allowing high-level protocols to run without loading the host CPU with interrupts and buffer-copy operations.^[6] It should also be noted that Firewire features two data busses for each segment of the bus network whereas USB only features one. This means that Firewire can have communication in both directions at the same time, but with USB communication can only occur in one direction at any one time.

Other differences are that FireWire uses simpler bus networking, provides more power over the chain and more reliable data transfer, and is less taxing on a CPU.^[37] USB requires the presence of a bus master, typically a PC, whereas FireWire is a true peer-to-peer network, thus allowing either device to serve as the host or the slave."

Almost all new puters have SATA II external interfaces and there are many external drives that support both SATA and USB

It's called eSATA for external, or eSATAp if you combine it with USB power.

"quite simply, it’s a misnomer"

Internal is better because it's an SATA interface not USB, but it's still inadvisable to have your music stored on the system boot drive no matter what.

In answer to your question, it's because they share the same bus if they are both using USB; the Pure Music website for example advised this:

"It's best to choose the hard drive(s) after choosing the computer and audio interface. The reason is that whatever connection "bus" is used by the audio interface, the storage interface should be different for best performance. For example, USB hard drives should be used with a FireWire audio interface, and vice versa. This is to avoid bus contention issues from occurring, because the audio stream is a real-time stream that cannot be interrupted. Theoretically, it is possible to daisy-chain hard drives with audio on a FireWire bus... but this is not advisable."

Also from Wikipedia:

"FireWire interfaces generally outperform similar transfers over USB 2.0 interfaces in real world environments....For example, the FireWire host interface supports memory-mapped devices, allowing high-level protocols to run without loading the host CPU with interrupts and buffer-copy operations.^[6] It should also be noted that Firewire features two data busses for each segment of the bus network whereas USB only features one. This means that Firewire can have communication in both directions at the same time, but with USB communication can only occur in one direction at any one time.

Other differences are that FireWire uses simpler bus networking, provides more power over the chain and more reliable data transfer, and is less taxing on a CPU.^[37] USB requires the presence of a bus master, typically a PC, whereas FireWire is a true peer-to-peer network, thus allowing either device to serve as the host or the slave."

Cool, thanks for the info, I guess if I do need more memory for music I'll just go for a larger internal drive rather than an external brick.
 

And, consider this: when those expensive, embedded USB solutions in other super-expensive DACs have fallen by the wayside for USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt or I2S (or whatever's next), you just swap out a card on your Bifrost, and you're ready for whatever future tech there is.

Unfortunately I have fallen into this trap before, buying a product that was upgradeable ("future-proof") only to discover that when something better came along several years later, either a) the company wasn't around anymore or b) the company has already dropped support for the product.  So an upgrade was never in the works.