AT, A slight squirrel moment regarding your post. The new Tascam UH7000 looks very good! GAS starts to kick in looking at that unit. But, I don't see direct inputs that bypass the onboard pre's. 

Yea, Musicroom, it looks good.  It has separate line/mic ins - don't know if the lines go through the preamps.  I've never found that to hurt, unless the preamps are really low quality and affect the sound.  But it ought to be separate for the market they are after.  And I wish it had inserts too.  And ADAT & spdif.  That would make it more ... adaptable, and not much more dollar-wise.
 
 
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Hey folks. IDK if you care about this, but I thought it was cool that certain RME devices horizontally scale. By this I mean you can use multiple RME devices concurrently. Total Mix will control one at a time I believe. I do not find it possible to open two instances of TotalMix (but I don't have 2 RMEs). I think that you would have to use the toggle to switch the devices. The RME Drivers will expose all the tracks from both devices to the DAW as a single device.
 

 
I haven't actually tried it, and I don't know what the upper limit of devices is. Somewhere in the back of my mind I'm hearing 3 but ...

Sanderxpander
Aren't you the one who always objects to vague statements and wants people to quantify and be specific? Statements like the above are what maintains this misconception. None of the above statements are based on fact and none of them have any meaning with regards to the real world performance of the audio interface.

I can't see what was vague or unspecific about what I wrote (I've added new stuff in bold):
 

CakeAlexS
 
1) As you see USB is far more variable with speed. - Fact, the Firewire is more efficient streaming data
 
2) You are likely to have a dedicated interface with firewire, not so with USB (you are plugging other USB stuff into it) - Fact.
 
3) Finally the protocol with Firewire is a lot more efficient in audio and video environments (streaming data). This is the reality. - Fact

 
 
I will provide references to back up statements (1) + (3) here and here, (2) is simply an obvious statement (although you could work around it by buying a dedicated USB interface). In a nutshell firewire streams data, USB is more of  a packeting system and is less efficient. There are probably better references out there that I've given on the internet I simply googled them.
 
You could argue that there isn't much difference, that may be true, but Firewire is slightly more superior and more reliable for audio applications (bottom line). That doesn't mean to say USB 2 is not up to the job, as we all know people use USB 2 quite happily, but there is a difference which goes beyond the theoretical.

On the flipside many people will find USB more convenient even under the considerations I stated earlier. It generally does the job. The end of the day it's up to the consumer to make an informed decision here.

Cheers :)

AT
Disinformation persists long past its due date.  Any of these choices, given the right drivers, will work.

Absolutely...
If you want to compare the potential of various "bus" options, PCIe throttles both USB and Firewire.
But in a real-world environment, it makes no difference for 99.9% of end users.
If you're running an 8 or 16 channel I/O audio interface, you're nowhere close to maxing out the bandwidth of USB-2.
 
I used a RME Babyface at a 48-sample ASIO buffer size... playing soft-synths live.
Used dense layers of Kontakt, Omnisphere, etc... hosted via Brainspawn Forte.
Never a hiccup.
Granted, this was with a custom built mini-ITX machine (fast and well configured)... but USB-2 was never a limitation. 
 

CakeAlexS

Sanderxpander
Aren't you the one who always objects to vague statements and wants people to quantify and be specific? Statements like the above are what maintains this misconception. None of the above statements are based on fact and none of them have any meaning with regards to the real world performance of the audio interface.

I can't see what was vague or unspecific about what I wrote (I've added new stuff in bold):
 

CakeAlexS
 
1) As you see USB is far more variable with speed. - Fact, the Firewire is more efficient streaming data
 
2) You are likely to have a dedicated interface with firewire, not so with USB (you are plugging other USB stuff into it) - Fact.
 
3) Finally the protocol with Firewire is a lot more efficient in audio and video environments (streaming data). This is the reality. - Fact

 
 
I will provide references to back up statements (1) + (3) here and here, (2) is simply an obvious statement (although you could work around it by buying a dedicated USB interface). In a nutshell firewire streams data, USB is more of  a packeting system and is less efficient. There are probably better references out there that I've given on the internet I simply googled them.
 
You could argue that there isn't much difference, that may be true, but Firewire is slightly more superior and more reliable for audio applications (bottom line). That doesn't mean to say USB 2 is not up to the job, as we all know people use USB 2 quite happily, but there is a difference which goes beyond the theoretical.

On the flipside many people will find USB more convenient even under the considerations I stated earlier. It generally does the job. The end of the day it's up to the consumer to make an informed decision here.

Cheers :)

ad 1) You're right, this is correct, but entirely irrelevant since even the lowest speed is easily a factor 10 higher than what most users would ever conceive of using. Not to mention I haven't ever seen anyone complain that their interface doesn't reach the quoted number of channels, which is really the only relevant thing.
 
ad 2) Pure assumption. Many people I know use Firewire disks for instance, which would put a far, far larger strain on the bus than a mouse or keyboard would. Using Firewire disks makes sense, since the speed difference is actually noticeable there. But let's be honest - nobody copies a ton of files in the background while recording audio, which would really be the only thing that would make a significant impact on bus usage.
 
ad 3) Sorry, how is this not vague? "More efficient"? What does that even mean? That your audio sounds better? No. That you can record more channels? Possibly, if you find me a Firewire interface that records 400 channels and a user that needs it I'll retract my statement. Yes Firewire is quicker for large file transfers. Perhaps that is what you mean with including video, since you're generally dealing with larger files there and you tend to transfer them right from the video device's FW port. Not relevant for audio interfaces.
 
I'm not even really disputing your "facts", I'm disputing the conclusions you draw from them.

musicroom
AT, A slight squirrel moment regarding your post. The new Tascam UH7000 looks very good! GAS starts to kick in looking at that unit. But, I don't see direct inputs that bypass the onboard pre's. 

Disclaimer: Gibson owns TASCAM. However, I just received a UH-7000 in for evaluation and have started the process of testing it. I have a long way to go before my tests are complete, but here are some pros and cons I've found so far:
 

• The mic pres are really fabulous. Gain is varied within the chip itself, not via external signal path controls, which optimizes noise. They're essentially using instrumentation amplifiers. I think TASCAM needs to make it clear that yes, you're buying an audio interface, but you're also buying a great stereo mic pre and it can be used independently as such.
• The specs and component choices are phenomenal. I won't name names but the specs are equal or in many cases superior to units that have until now been considered top of the line. There's a lot of attention paid to details like the power supply (it's not bus-powered). I haven't measured crosstalk yet (where a lot of interfaces fall down - crosstalk reduces the stereo imaging and narrows the soundstage) but I suspect it's going to be better than -80dB. I've measured some well-known interfaces that barely manage to hit -55dB.
• There's no high-Z input for guitar. TASCAM figured that if you're going to get a premium interface, you probably have a favorite direct box. Well I do have a Radial JDV class A DI, but I doubt everyone does.
• The gain tops out at +60dB, which is not really enough for many (most?) ribbon mics.
• The +48V is really +48V. I've measured interfaces that top out at +34V.
• The UH-7000 is substantial and requires AC, so I'd classify it as portable but definitely not mobile.
• It's what I'll be using from now on for anything that requires miking.

 
 

Oh, and FireWire vs. USB? USB 2.0 is faster than FW400. FW 800 is faster than USB 2.0. USB 3.0 is faster than FW 800. Thunderbolt is potentially faster than all of them, although past a certain point, any port protocol becomes I/O bound. For example Thunderbolt read speeds only become a big advantage with solid-state drives because regular hard drives can't keep up.
 
FireWire has its own dedicated chip to handle housekeeping whereas USB uses some computer resources. This used to matter when computers were less powerful, but these days the amount of CPU USB requires is a very small percentage of the total bandwidth.
 
Remember that when FireWire was born, Ronald Reagan was in the White House. It's had a good run and FW interfaces will continue to work into the future; you can get adapters for Thunderbolt. But it has less and less support on new hardware, particularly laptops; and with many laptops not having card slots any more, you can't add a FireWire port.

This will be off topic, but for those looking for a new converter, check out the Cymatic audio converter, 24 in and out for $999.  USB and amazing price point. And they also promise a very good USB driver as well.  Will be available in June or later.
dan
 

Ah, Jim, I expect you to have a nice computer ;-)
 
Craig, thanks for thoughts on the UH-7000.  You make it sound tempting....
 
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