I need firewire interface recommendations

[daydreamdelay]

is there anything worth looking into in the -$250 range?

[glimmertwin]

Does it have to be firewire?  You have quite a few more options in your price range going with USB 2.0 - especially if all you need is 2 channels.

If you need 8, I would save up a litttle bit more and grab a used Presonus Firepod of eBay.  Those are pretty good quality for the price($350 or so on ebay if you get a deal)...

...maybe try one of the older Motu interfaces - they are a little cheaper.

[daydreamdelay]

I'd prefer firewire since I've been through a few USB interfaces and no matter what I do with the settings there always seems to be some latency.. plus my daughter broke off the tip of a 1/8 plug in the speaker jack of my ibook so when the USB interface is plugged in along with my mouse there's no other USB ports available

anyway thanks for the recommendations.. I'll check into them, I just need two channels of each




any others I should check out?

[glimmertwin]

...I'm just really high on the Presouns stuff having used the Firepod, Digimiax, the tubepre, the headphone amp, and the faderport.  Most of the guys in our  band have at least one piece of presonus stuff and the local recording rental place also has Presonus stuff so we really have tried a lot of stuff...try the Firebox for a decent two channel firewire recording interface.  I think it's $300 new - used you could probably get it in your price range.

[Maggieo]

I really like my MOTU Ultralite.

[mezcalhead]

Is latency less of a problem with firewire?

I'm certainly noticing quite a lot of latency with the M-Audio and Garageband. I'm not sure if there's anything I can do with the software settings to reduce it. Today it was such a problem that one of the riffs I was playing ended up an entire quaver earlier .. I actually liked it that way so I left it there, but I can't keep recording like that.

[Maggieo]

Is latency less of a problem with firewire?

Definitely.  FireWire is waaay faster than USB and latency is reduced quite a bit, but not entirely eliminated.

[mezcalhead]

Well I guess it can never be entirely eliminated .. is it a lot less noticeable though? If it can't be reduced to a subliminal level I may have to return to using a hard disk recorder.

I feel a lot better about my first recording attempts a couple of weeks ago though .. as I was saying to ddd I was having a lot of trouble keeping in time and feeling a bit inadequate about it .. now I know it was the USB connection!

[luau]

Firewire tends to be faster even though USB 2.0 in high speed mode can deliver 480mbps compared to Firewire's 400mbps. How can this be so? It's a matter of architecture. USB is designed such that every device plays slave to the computer's master role. USB offloads routing/flow decisions on the bus to the computer's CPU. Firewire, on the other hand, uses an architecture that is more peer-to-peer. Each Firewire device is intelligent in that they can figure out their own problems. This is also why, all things being equal, that Firewire devices tend to be more expensive. They are smarter. The slower your computer's CPU, the more exaggerated the difference becomes.

[glimmertwin]

I would make sure of two things - the interface has either a soft or hardwired way to direct monitor(without latency) and second that the recording software you use has latency delay compensation(like Logic, Cubase, Nuendo, etc)  so you don't have to manually move files back in your DAW to time correct them.  It means you won't be able to run soft synths or virtual effects "live" but if you need them so bad to track I would recommend a comperable hardware piece on the side to monitor through which is still going to provide some delay but not as much and the performance is still captured in time....

[mezcalhead]

I've been thinking about all this and I'm still not sure I get it .. the new tracks I lay down end up ahead of the beat, so the latency is in the playback of what I've recorded previously, right?

The problem seems to get worse when I'm using the onboard sound outputs rather than the M-Audio for playback, ie: when I plug headphones into the laptop directly, what I play ends up even more ahead. There's still problems when using the headphone out on the M-Audio though.

I can't get my head around how using an outboard mixer would fix this .. the delay caused by CPU processing the playback +/- sending it out through USB to the M-Audio would still exist? I have a little two channel disco mixer with headphone outs so I could give it a shot I suppose.

I'm still learning Garageband at the moment and I like it enough so far that I don't want to try different recording software .. but it doesn't have latency delay compensation as far as I can discover.

Also .. do the Firebox and the MOTU Ultralight have the direct monitoring feature you mention? I can't seem to see it in the specs .. the Firebox says "low latency" but I don't know if that'll still be too high for me. I don't mind getting another piece of kit but only if it'll fix the problem.

Dammit, if I hadn't spent my entire life practising timing with a metronome I probably wouldn't even notice the problem.

[Maggieo]

The MOTU Ultralite will let you monitor directly via headphones or dedicated audio outs.

Here's some Ul linkx:

http://remixmag.com/tech/studio_tools/r ... ultralite/

Great review and discussion here:

http://www.studio-central.com/phpbb/vie ... sc&start=0

[mezcalhead]

Thanks, great links .. just to specifically ask you the question (since the rest of your gear seems similar to mine), do you notice latency as a problem with the Ultralite?

[Maggieo]

Thanks, great links .. just to specifically ask you the question (since the rest of your gear seems similar to mine), do you notice latency as a problem with the Ultralite?

No, not really.  There might be a bit, now and then, but I have to really be hammering the processor, or, running some sort of outboard gear in addition to the Ultralite.

[glimmertwin]

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul05/a ... irebox.htm


....direct monitoring can be done with the Firepod's soft mixer(see "Pros")...I think it even comes with a 48 track version of Cubase which I know had the compensation mentioned earlier.

...I'm not familiar enough with Garageband to know how to fix the problem your having, but I know generally it's wise to use the hardware monitoring function of your inbox over your laptop's solution.  If you can take your present M-audio interface and figure out how to get zero latency diret monitoring it will solve the performance aspect of it.  Which M-Audio interface do you presently have? 

I don't know what can be making it record ahead of the beat, but it sounds like you have some delay compenstion setting not properly set...the Logic/Cubase crowd automatically does that with the ability to override if you want.  Garageband you think would be set to do that depending on the version you have since it is now a low end Logic environment...but even if not, you should be able to figure out the latency the hardware is regsitering and push the track back into place in the DAW.  I wish I had more experience with Garageband to help you, but maybe this will help.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html ... f1090.html