Yeah, as Big Boss Man said, right now the real-world pros and cons are basically that firewire supports a whole lot of stable, low-latency, high-quality, portable, inexpensive audio interfaces and 34 does not.
I am sure there are theoretical advantages to 34 slot, but given that firewire can deliver 16+ channels of high sample-rate, high bit-depth, low-latency audio, and that firewire is stable, inexpensive, widely suported by a variety of different computers and interfaces, and does it all without bogging down the CPU, what more are you looking for in terms of "pros"? And what is there in terms of real-world "cons"?
I've got nothing against Expresscard interfaces. In fact, I've never even seen one or heard of one other than the Apogee Symphony, which I'm sure is great. It seems pretty likely that in a few years, there will be several high-quality 34 slot audio interfaces. Maybe the best audio interface made in 2009 will be a slot 34 type. Maybe it will be firewire. Maybe it will be USB 2.0. Maybe it will be some kind of RAID connection, or some yet-to-be-invented protocol. Maybe it will be wireless. But does it really matter that much how it connects to the computer?
My $.02, anyway.
Cheers.
post edited by yep - 2006/10/26 17:12:20