[njekin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by E.B.M.Head /img/forum/go_quote.gif Firewire devices have a lower delay than USB devices. That's important when you are recording or use the midi ports. Pro Users want the lowest possible delay to avoid recording glitches or out of tune playing midi instruments. Thats why most pro gear comes with firewire ports, as USB isn't ideal for time critical tasks by design. If you are just listening, then a USB device is absolutely ok. For normal listening it doesn't matter if your music starts and stops after 2 ms or 20ms after you've hit the button.

absolutely. For professional users, actually the most important feature is stability and low latency. and mostly they don't care about the quality of playback but the quality of micpreamp.

 

[audioengr]

Firewire and USB interfaces are technically identical for purposes of audio streaming. It's a matter of what chips are available and how good these are and how the circuits are implemented that matters.

For instance, the PCM270X chipset from TI is not as good as the TAS1020 from TI. No matter how good a design job you do on the circuits, the TAS1020 will generally sound better than a PCM270X design. The circuit design and clock is critical also. Typically, the Firewire chips available are not as good as the TAS1020, but maybe better than the PCM270X.

A "pull" protocol will be superior to a "push" protocol from the design standpoint too. Both interfaces can be either. Retry and error-correction is not generally a concern, and unnecessary.

The answer is not black and white as you can see.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

Apogee mini-DAC vs Duet: Colorado Springs 7/13/08 Mini-Meet Report! Apogee mini-DAC vs Duet shootout, HE60/HEV70 vs HP-1000 vs PS-1 and more! - Page 3 - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio

The sound is quite similar. The Duet runs at 24/96. The mini-DAC will do that through optical but it's USB receiver chip is limited to 16/48. I don't know what bit rate/Khz the firewire version of mini-DAC will do, but it makes sense to assume 24/96 like the Duet.

 

[Tea]

From my experience even the USB2 still lag, I have a EMU 0404 USB before, it is okay when listen music, but when I use it for gaming, it lag like hell.....