Pissed off about thunderbolt

So you'd think Apples were the only fruit in town.  Anyone else pissed off about the lack of USB3 or PC friendly highest quality ADDA offerings?  I'm still using a Lynx L22, which I can not praise enough about.  Worked all these years through many, many MS upgrades.  But now what?  I can purchase and install a thunderbolt card but really?  Really?  Why aren't we worthy? 
 

Drivers have to be approved by both Apple and Intel. I talked with two prominent interface manufacturers, who said Apple drags their feet. They've been waiting/wanting to do Windows Thunderbolt for a loooooong time. 
 
Meanwhile, there are excellent USB 3.0 options. The TASCAM US-20x20 gives exceptional bang for the buck (I reviewed it in the Manchester release eZine), and I'm currently doing a Harmony Central Pro Review on the high-end, Windows-only Apollo Twin USB 3.0 from Universal Audio. I think you'll find post #8 particularly interesting (of course, I'm testing with SONAR).

As technology marches on, I go from tech rich at the time I upgrade my little studio PC, to tech poor over the course of three or four years. I chose a Z170 TH approved board that also supports AVB and USB3 this time. That said, it's going to be a while before TSN might be adopted. AND I am one of those waiting for a TH3 to TH2 adaptor so that I can use my thunderbolt ready Motu audio converter.

I understand your frustration, we are in a world driven by commerce along with multiple providers supporting that commerce with a finite set of resources. I suspect if they all had the perfect view of the future, time to market for technology shifts like ThunderBolt 3 would collapse.

I agree, USB 3 was out first and ignored.....and almost still is. Not many PCs offer Thunderbolt, unless it is a gaming PC. I'm not about to buy another PC, I just built one with USB3 ports

Jim Roseberry
...FWIW, The Behringer X32 USB audio drivers will let you set absurdly low buffer sizes.
If memory serves, it could go down as low as 1.2ms total round-trip latency at 44.1k
BUT... it couldn't play audio cleanly/reliably (under substantial loads) until you were at ~10ms.
Behringer can claim ridiculously low round-trip latency... but under real-world conditions (substantial loads) it was nowhere close to RME performance.
 
RME is expensive, but they're the pinnacle of low-latency performance.

Hi Jim
 
Totally agree about the need for audio interfaces to actually be "usable" at the latency they claim to achieve, which the Zoom does, just not with a VST load as substantial as with the RMEs. That's why in my post above I said "I'm able to achieve usable (click free) RTL of 1.5ms at 64 samples @ 192Khz with 2 VSTs (Kontakt an TH3)". Like you said, often manufacturers will claim "very low latency" when it's actually not usable, even with light loads (i.e. Behringer X32 at minimum settings). One thing I would love to see is the UAC-2 being tested by TAFKAT on GearSlutz and see what kind of Low Latency Performance the Zoom can achieve. At 44.1/48Khz I believe it would be high, but not quite as high as RME. At higher sampling rates however, the RME simply can't match because RME "scale up" their buffer settings, unlike the ZOOM.
 
The only caveat regarding the Zoom is that it is relatively sensitive to the USB controller it's being connected to (like in the past with FireWire controller chipsets) My PC has a Renesa USB3 controller and works reliably with the Zoom but not at 192Khz /32 samples, I must use 64 samples at 192Khz. Zoom only guaranties performance with Intel USB3 controllers, so definitely YMMV.
 
So if a user is in a situation where he doesn't need his interface to work with very heavy loads, such as a guitarist playing live and using his interface to host his favorite AmpSims, or a piano player playing live with his favorite Piano library (i.o.w. any live setup where only a few instruments are being played by the interface), nothing on USB beats the Zoom (yet) because it can use such low (usable) buffer setting at high sample rates. I can tell you that being able to play my guitar with my favorite AmpSims (S-Gear, TH3, AT3) at 2.2ms RTL (96Khz/32buffer) is just pure joy . BTW, with AmpSims, AFAICT only Overloud TH2/TH3 can work reliably at 192Khz (1.1~1.5ms RTL) because other AmpSims don't include the IR Cab samples for anything higher than 96Khz and if you try to use them at 192Khz, they turn off their Cab simulation so they sound like total s**t!. However Piano VST usually can works at 192K and if your PC is powerful enough and has an Intel USB3 controller, at 192K/32spl the Zoom can achieve as low as 1.1ms RTL totally reliably (according to users on GearSlutz). That is some crazy low RTL!
 
So my current advice for the best "usable" USB audio interface (irrespective of price) would depend on what you intend to do with it:
- All around work with large orchestral libraries with tons of channel and EFX at relatively very low latency (i.e. ~ 5ms): RME
- Musician playing live guitar/keyboard/e-drummer wanting the absolute lowest latency possible (1.1ms ~ 2.2ms depending on their PC specs): ZOOM UAC series
 
Jim, I know you play live so depending on your setup needs, the Zoom could be very useful to you. If you ever have the chance to test it, please report back your results.
 
Sorry for the big OT post Oh and on that subject (TB), my next PC build will use the latest motherboard (Z170x or X99p) with ThunderBolt 3 through USB-C. I'm just waiting a bit more to see what kind of performance we will actually get on Windows and I really hope it's better than the Zoom. I'm also very excited by MOTU Windows TB3 driver for their AVB series. Finally we should get back the audio performance we used to have on the PCI bus 10 years ago!
 
Chuck

vanceen
In addition to those mentioned above by Anderton, RME now has the UFX+, which is USB 3.0 (and Thunderbolt).

 
Announced... but not yet available (at least in the US).

The system works like this:
 
Apple sells a mostly closed hardware product to clientele with a high vanity quotient?, and wallets to match.In this model you don't incremental upgrade your machine, you buy a whole new one.
 
However, real work must be done - expansion and connectivity is needed. How do you reconcile that need with a closed box system?
 
You build high speed external I/O, and and you do it on the bleeding edge - and you can afford to do this, because your clients will pony up.
 
On Windows, Thunderbolt is mostly meh. Nice to have, but there just isn't that many use cases to justify it at the current moment. USB nicely fills the bill and is more than capable of providing enough channels to choke today's CPU. So the thinking is, let the bleeding Apple folk amortize the cost of developing/debugging Thunderbolt and us regular PC folks will sit tight tol then. 
 
Microsoft finally took notice with of Thunderbolt with the introduction of USB-Type C, with its alternate mode transmission. It's future proof to a point, and by allowing other protocols,  it doesn't box them in with a technology controlled by others. I'm guessing it'll be another year before USB-Type C/Thunderbolt etc make it to non-gamer PC's.