[PD] firewire is dead?

Jonathan Wilkes jancsika at yahoo.com
Tue Oct 16 02:10:40 CEST 2012


You can buy a firewire interface, I think they're pretty cheap nowadays.


I think one advantage of firewire is that USB has some overhead associated
with managing the bus from the OS.

This part I'm a little shaky on, so someone please tell me if I'm wrong-- if
you're trying to deal with low latency with USB it's impossible to tell the
OS to prioritize traffic going over USB to the connected USB audio interface
but at the same time deprioritize traffic going over that same USB hub to
other connected devices.  So a crappy driver for a usb laser mouse can cause
problems even if everything is working perfectly with the audio interface.
But I may be completely misremembering what I learned about USB awhile
back...

On a somewhat related note-- I think there is still some BIOS stuff related
to power management (esp. on laptops) that are not affected by even the
real time kernel patches.  Those latencies that the BIOS introduces are
just a result of however well (or poor) the stuff was written that
ships with the machine you're using. If it was written very inefficiently
then you're just stuck with it no matter what OS you use. Yet another in a
long list of reasons to have control over the software that runs in your
machine!

-Jonathan


----- Original Message -----
> From: patrick <puredata at 11h11.com>
> To: Pure Data list <pd-list at iem.at>
> Cc: 
> Sent: Monday, October 15, 2012 7:17 PM
> Subject: [PD] firewire is dead?
> 
> hi all,
> 
> i have a firepod 1010 firewire soundcard, i am using linux / jack. the new 
> motherboard doesn't have firewire. what to do?
> 
> also will i be able to lower the latency even more if i have a faster cpu? or 
> it's really the firewire / soundcard limitation? what it the lowest latency 
> soundcard for linux available on the market? i might consider to make a move 
> towards usb.
> 
> pat
> 
> 
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