So question for the Focurite fans

If you have a choice go w/ USB (which seems to work fine from reports here).  I love FW, but it is no longer a standard for most interfaces and just about every computer.

My Saffire Pro24dsp bit the dust as my very old cat had a fit behind my DAW and dislocated the firewire cable...way too costly for a cable coming disconnected... USB all the way...

I've never had a problem with my ageing Saffire Pro 26 running on Firewire - it is virtually unbreakable (and i should know )
 
My smaller Saffire 6 runs on USB and isn't quite as bomb proof as the 26, and i can't get a similarly low latency that the 26 provides without dropouts or the Rice Crispies effect
 
Either way, I think Focusrite make some superb interfaces at all sorts of price points. you won't be disappointed

If I were buying today, I would opt for USB since that has come along nicely, is faster than FW now, and is more widely compatible.  There are some folks who experience chip compatibility issues with some FW chipsets.  That's not an issue on USB.
 
Just to say the latency and performance is still better with Firewire than USB 2 (firewire 400 is around 25% faster apparently, although take that with a pinch of salt), and even better if you only have one device running one dedicated interface. If there were any USB 3 interfaces available than sure USB would be faster than firewire, but then Thunderbolt could throw a spanner in the works... one day....
 
In the real world firewire is without doubt faster right now.. Maybe not for very much longer...
My Firewire Saffire Pro 40 is running on an ASIO buffer size of 128 right now, I may risk 96 soon. 
 
Thanks
 

 

 
 
Here's a Focusrite article:
http://uk.focusrite.com/news/which-interface
 
 

CakeAlexS In the real world firewire is without doubt faster right now.. 

 
It's not so much that its faster, but that it has DMA, Direct Memory Access, like PCI does. That equals lower latency which is what we are after for audio. Bandwidth isn't a big issue.
 
I know that Firewire is technically a better interface tech for audio, my concern was about Focusrite drivers n' support n' such in particular.
 
I opted for USB for now. I do not need low latency at all (2000 samples is plenty fine).

Well I got a defective one, or at least I hope so. Thing hooked up and worked fine, then after a bit, stopped talking to the software which claims nothing is hooked up. Power cycling it doesn't fix the problem, just has the green and red lights for each of the two channels turn on. So back it goes. Hopefully the next one will work better.

I just went from an Edirol M-16DX to a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 and I've been very happy with it and think USB is they way to go since firewire seems to be on the way out.  I have a lot of stuff hooked up to my USB ports and everything works great.

I may be late to the game, but my opinion is to go with USB since it's more future-proof than Firewire.
 
However--and this is a BIG however--you will soon realize that not all Focusrite interfaces of similar variety are created equal. Even the 18i6 (USB) is different than the Pro 24 (Firewire)! You would think that they were the same except for the computer connection, right?  Nope!  Therefore, when choosing one or the other, you must be very mindful of the inputs vs. outputs; one may work for your input/output needs, and it may just be the Firewire one! <facepalm>
 
For Example:
18i6: Ins: Analog (8), ADAT (8), SPDIF (2) - Total 18
18i6: Outs: Analog (2), SPDIF (2), Headphone (2) - Total 6
 
Pro24: Ins: Analog (4), ADAT (8), SPDIF (2), "Loopback" (2) - Total 16
Pro24: Outs: Analog (6), SPDIF (2) - Total 8
 
Tricky Brits! As you can see, the Pro24 (the Firewire one) gives much more routing options. Those outputs come in handy if you have outboard effects gear.  That that loopback feature?  Very handy; almost required. In the Pro 24, it is most annoying that the headphone jack is tied to Outputs 3/4 (whereas the the 18i6 has them separate), which is fine for most cases and gives you the luxury of having a dedicated volume knob, but this will create nasty feedback loops if you decide to use this as an output to any outboard gear as an effects bus! So a drawback to this is that essentially, unless you're using a separate mixer, you inherently lose the ability to use Outputs 3/4! <facepalm again>