Re: RME PCI cardbus vs Firewire

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On 25 maj 2006, at 00.36, L.A. Angulo wrote:

> gang,
> is there a difference between cards using PCI bus and
> firewire in terms of cpu performance and stability or
> is it just a driver issue?which one would u use for
> faster stable performance and reliability? i am
> looking for more user info primarily on the RME cards,
> if anyone has experience with them and school me a bit
> on this id appreciate it.
> thanx
> Luis


By technical specifications the PCI (and PCMCIA cardbus) protocol is  
slightly faster than firewire 800. Firewire 400 is a little bit  
faster than USB 2. But how this affects the system depends also on  
how you use it (multi track?)  and how you combine it with other  
gear. For example a lot of audio channels going through a firewire  
interface may work less stable if also a firewire drive is used on  
the same port for file storage or sample streaming playback. Also,  
some audio interfaces don't perform so well if MIDI cc data is  
shuffled through its MIDI in/out port (as is the case with my RME  
Multiface and that's why I use a separate USB MIDI port to get the  
optimal audio performance out of the PCI or Cardbus connected  
Multiface).

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se (Swedish)
www.looproom.com (international)
http://tinyurl.com/fauvm (podcast)