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Apogee Mini-Dac product update!

Sep 2, 2005 at 10:04 PM Thread Starter Post #1 of 16
Trogdor

Trogdor

Reviewer: Metal-Fi
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Got this in just now:

"The only update that will be happening to the Mini-DAC anytime soon
will be the creation of a firewire 400 option card for direct
connection to your PC or Mac over firewire. If you purchase a Mini
product (either the DAC or ME) with USB, you will be able to upgrade it
to the firewire option for a small fee."

Totally coolness, so this box will be USB or Firewire. Kinda nice and hard to go wrong.
 
Sep 2, 2005 at 10:30 PM Post #3 of 16
Hmm, maybe I'm just not getting the meaning. Does this mean that the Apogee will have both USB and firewire connectivity "built-in" or are we talking about a separate card for connection to firewire? Hope like heck that they are talking about everything in one box. Ah, of course they are...guess I'm being a newb on this, huh?
 
Sep 2, 2005 at 10:32 PM Post #4 of 16
Where did you get this info? Apogee has been talking about this for over an year at this point, IIRC. As much as it would be nice to see Firewire option, especially since I use an iBook, I'm not really holding my breath for it.
 
Sep 2, 2005 at 10:32 PM Post #5 of 16
It'll be a board inside the minime/minidac that has firewire ports. They'd planned on doing it way back when the minime first came out, but decided it was too expensive at that point to justify.
 
Sep 2, 2005 at 10:41 PM Post #7 of 16
Quote:

Originally Posted by Salt Peanuts
Ken - It's either USB or Firewire. There really isn't enough space internally to accomodate both USB and Firewire card.


Thanks Salt. Figured having both options was too good to be true. Curious as to which would give the best performance with the fewest problems? Oh and one more question...is the current usb option a 1 or 2? If it's a 1, wouldn't that make the firewire a better solution or would it make a difference.
 
Sep 2, 2005 at 10:46 PM Post #9 of 16
Quote:

Originally Posted by grawk
It's a 1, and firewire is definitely the preferable solution...


Forgive the continuing newb questions but a computer rig is somewhat foreign to me at this point. Why would the firewire be preferred? Would it still be if we were talking about USB2? How come?
 
Sep 3, 2005 at 5:40 AM Post #13 of 16
Quote:

Originally Posted by grawk
Firewire has more bandwidth, and more reliable buffering.


Who do need more bandwitdh and why when we're taling 'bout use of MiniDAC?
Isn't it just a stereo DAC with stereo I/O ('s)?

jiitee
 
Sep 3, 2005 at 2:35 PM Post #14 of 16
Nmmm...I guess I'll be saving up for the firewire version instead of usb now. I've been listening to my PC's built-in line-out for a while and have been itching for an upgrade. I'm about 2/3 of the way saving up for a Mini-Dac but given that there's no date set for release yet, I have a long time to get the remaining 1/3.
 
Sep 3, 2005 at 5:55 PM Post #15 of 16
Oh my, another hole looming in my wallet.

One significant advantage of Firewire is that it is usually a separate bus than the usb bus, which carries keyboard, mouse, printer, whatnot. Keeping the audio device on the separate bus will eliminate most of the pops, crackles, and pauses associated with USB.

Also the voltage available on the FW bus is much higher than USB. It makes bus powered devices more reliable and stable. Unfortunately many laptop manufacturers use that bastardized 4 pin mini connector for FW, so no bus power available.

Personally I would love to see FW interface become the standard for consumer audio gear. Unfortunately USB has the momentum, so we will end up with the VHS beats Beta compromise again. But I'm not bitter
wink.gif



gerG
 
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