thunderbolt faster than pci-x cards?

Does anyone know whether the speed of thunderbolt will be faster than a pci or pci-e audio card?
 
As far as I know pci is suppose to be the best connection to a pc.

Thank You Jim.

I had my suspicions regarding Thunderbolt and may I say your are worth your weight in gold.


You have made me one happy camper.

Cheers.

Keyboard mag just posted this
http://www.keyboardmag.com/article/150853
that there is or will be an inexpensive adaptor to run Thunderbolt into a Firewire input. I am hoping Jim Roseberry, can expand and explain what this might mean to my next desktop build (ie whether to consider it) or whether this is purely the laptop "small form" realm.

My ASUS has no FW port, but I have thought about the UA Apollo, as a future upgrade.
Thanks Michael

that there is or will be an inexpensive adaptor to run Thunderbolt into a Firewire input. I am hoping Jim Roseberry, can expand and explain what this might mean to my next desktop build (ie whether to consider it) or whether this is purely the laptop "small form" realm.

There will be no advantage to running Firewire via Thunderbolt vs. just running a quality TI chipset PCIe Firewire controller.


Thunderbolt is a much bigger deal to laptop and small-form-factor users... as you already have access to the PCIe bus and fast graphics with a desktop/tower.


Another thing to note about Apollo is that the Thunderbolt connection is a $500 option (not stock).

BTW, Firewire has plenty of bandwidth for multi I/O audio interfaces.
PCIe has significantly more bandwidth... so it's very much a moot point for desktop/tower users.

"You can have a 20 lane highway with zero traffic... but if your Fiat only goes 80mph, it's still going to take an hour to go 80 miles."

Not necessarily,   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhm7-LEBznk

Oh my...   
Run the other direction!  Quickly...   

a side note to the Apollo. IF you think you have to have this (why i dont know) i dont like any "combo" products
you want an interface buy an inteface, mixer? same, DSP buy a UAD.

anyway it only works right on TB period on FW it sucks badly. even UAs site say so in better words.

jcschild
a side note to the Apollo. IF you think you have to have this (why i dont know) 

As for "why" possibly a feature of the Apollo that appeals to some is that you can throw UAD plug-in fx on input channels while tracking without needing to run them on a UAD card in the PC, and monitor the thusly-effected channels without latency (apart from any processing latency inside Apollo).

The downside is that latency is incurred when throwing Apollo fx on tracks coming from your DAW over FW and back, same as when using an external UAD satellite box, although there are ways to mitigate that somewhat by running audio from the DAW to be effected into the Apollo's inputs instead of via the FW interface.

i dont like any "combo" products 
you want an interface buy an inteface, mixer? same, DSP buy a UAD. 

Well, the Fireface UFX isn't really all that different from Apollo in many aspects, interface, mixer and dsp fx.
Anyway, I'm guessing a big reason people buy an Apollo instead of (or in addition to UAD cards) is that they want to throw UAD fx on the inputs while recording.

anyway it only works right on TB period on FW it sucks badly. even UAs site say so in better words.

Hadn't seen anything about that. Can you post a link to where on UA's site it says that?


Certainly there's more bandwidth with TB, but FW800 can still handle a good amount of traffic from/to Apollo (at least, as long as you're not also streaming audio with a daisy-chained FW drive), and there is a bandwidth allocation setting in the Apollo control panel. 

A question about motherboard bandwidth. I might not have a proper perception of this, but is there a relative factor to the motherboard spec of bandwidth there? i.e. if the transmission speed to it's hard drives are maxed out at 6gbs does the thunderport speed suddenly have to 'slow for children' and reduce it's speed by half because the MB has that spec to it?

Liken the situation to SATA-III and PCIe.
SATA-III doesn't cause PCIe bus bandwidth to be limited.

Jim Roseberry

Anyway, I'm guessing a big reason people buy an Apollo instead of (or in addition to UAD cards) is that they want to throw UAD fx on the inputs while recording.

Since you're talking post post A/D, I just don't see the appeal.

Not sure I follow you there.  A-D, fx and D-A latencies in Apollo (at least for fx likely to be used when tracking) are minimal compared to the RTL when tracking and monitoring through fx running on a UAD card in the PC.

If it was significantly less expensive... maybe.
For that cost, I'll take a piece of prime outboard... and a rock-solid RME audio interface.

Hah, like a FF UFX maybe?

air enough. Though I think I was thinking more along the lines that a 6gbs HD effectively is received at 3gbs if that's the motherboards max sata port speed? add: Perhaps it would be more relative to the PCIe standard and not really relative at all otherwise.  :)

The limiting factor with SATA is the speed of the HDs themselves.
No single conventional SATA-III HD is fast enough to saturate the SATA-II bus... let alone the SATA-III bus.
Thus, you'll achieve the same performance connecting a SATA-III HD to a SATA-II or SATA-III controller.

Jim Roseberry

ot sure I follow you there.  A-D, fx and D-A latencies in Apollo (at least for fx likely to be used when tracking) are minimal compared to the RTL when tracking and monitoring through fx running on a UAD card in the PC.

I'm basically saying that if you're processing the signal post A/D, it's not the same as having used quality hardware pre A/D (especially dynamics).  In this case, you might as well process upon playback... 

As you well know... the RME UFX is awesome.   

Ah, ok, you were referring to running through (analog?) outboard gear on the way in? 


I was talking about lower monitoring latency of effected inputs when tracking than when doing the fx ITB, which seems to be a major appeal of Apollo.

Yeah, UFX is very nice, but the fx don't really match the Apollo's emulations of some of that quality hardware to which you referred (but at less cost and availability of multiple instancing).


Not that I necessarily support UA's approach, although I do find some of their emulations are very nice. Whatever works best in a particular situation/budget.


It's a shame e-PCIe never got developed as an external interfacing standard so we're stuck going forward with whatever Intel (and Apple?) permit with TB, or else the few PCIe offerings (and still-supported PCI stuff) and FW and USB. e-PCIe coulda' been a real contender.


Anyway, always nice to have more options/choices. Like, Liquid Channel, or Liquid Mix? Or neither? Or both?