Firewire 400 vs. 800

[Noman]

Was wondering if it makes a difference to run an 002 rack on Firewire 400 or 800.

[tele_player]

the 002 will only operate at 400, even on an 800 port.

[DJ Insomaniac]

true, but then it would free up the 400 bus. you'd have less crunching (theoretically) in the buffers, so you could possibly get even better FW drive performance.

[JFreak]

you'd have less crunching (theoretically) in the buffers, so you could possibly get even better FW drive performance.



not true - firewire performance doesn't depend on which ports you use if the ports are on the same firewire buss. if you however connect your firewire drive to different firewire buss than your audio interface, that will help big time.

(for powerbook users that different firewire buss would mean pcmcia card, and for desktop users most likely additional pci firewire card. at least powerbooks' fw400 and fw800 ports are connected to same buss, that fact has been double-checked from apple tech documents.)

[Glenn G]

Now this is an informative thread.

I've got 2 internal ATA drives running on the same bus (one is the system drive, the other is just for audio) on a G4 Powermac/733. I also have a firewire 400 drive and 002r running on the firewire bus. (My firewire drive is pretty noisy so it's relegated mostly for backups these days.)

My partner, who has an MBox/G4 Powerbook setup recently picked up a Lacie D2 and reported a noticeable performance boost.

I've been looking to squeeze a little more performance out of my system and was wondering if running the 2 internal drives on the same bus is dragging my system down. If so, would adding a firewire PCI card and running the 002r and the firewire drive (for audio) on different busses be of benefit in terms of performance or would the difference be minimal?

[tele_player]

I'm curious as to why this should be? The total bandwidth required is way below even FW400, and FW allows devices to reserve bandwidth... at least in some modes.



you'd have less crunching (theoretically) in the buffers, so you could possibly get even better FW drive performance.



not true - firewire performance doesn't depend on which ports you use if the ports are on the same firewire buss. if you however connect your firewire drive to different firewire buss than your audio interface, that will help big time.

(for powerbook users that different firewire buss would mean pcmcia card, and for desktop users most likely additional pci firewire card. at least powerbooks' fw400 and fw800 ports are connected to same buss, that fact has been double-checked from apple tech documents.)

[DJ Insomaniac]

you'd have less crunching (theoretically) in the buffers, so you could possibly get even better FW drive performance.



not true - firewire performance doesn't depend on which ports you use if the ports are on the same firewire buss.



true, but on a FW 800 G4, the 800 is on it's own bus. PowerBooks, this is not the case.

[JFreak]

on a FW 800 G4, the 800 is on it's own bus



have you checked this from apple technical documents? i don't mean marketing brochures...

[JFreak]

I'm curious as to why this should be? The total bandwidth required is way below even FW400, and FW allows devices to reserve bandwidth... at least in some modes.



i'm also wondering about why this has suddenly become an issue with panther - in jaguar i had no trouble whatsover, but with panther it is a necessity to have 002R and hard drive on different firewire buss. i mean, i do live mixing/recording and CANNOT afford a single hiccup, so my standards are as high as it gets. one error is too much.

[Infa]

Not to get off topic or anything,,, but does anyone know why in gods name Digi even made the 002 to be firewire?? What happened to the good reliable, stable, better comunicative, (I think faster), HARD WIRED TO YOUR SYSTEM PCI slot Digi 001 way ?

That is way better in my eyes. There is no way the sound, all that information, and (here's the most important) the CLOCK can travel through that janky ***** firewire cord with out getting more outrageous "jitter" than the 001.. Plus it just seems lame.

I love firewire for things like Video, cameras, scanners, external back up drives, etc. But I don't trust it for something as serious as my whole music studio.. And the 001 is a older model, but has the same (more like) cable connection as the Mix systems or HD,,,,,, so that oughta tell ya something there.... If firewire is so great,,, then why once you get past LE, they are ALL PCI slotted , hard wired to your system type of riggs ?? And what kills me is,, the Digi 001 is like that,,, it's great... But here this new, so called advanced version of it, called the 002,, hooks up the same LAME way as the damn MBox !!!!!!!!!!

Come on Digi---

[JFreak]

firewire bandwidth is quite equal to pci bandwidth, there's no difference. firewire is just a lot more portable and enables truly mobile on-location recording. i just love it!

the reason why HD gear is pci might be because in big-money studios the workstations usually have several units, and those can easily be installed into pci expanders - moving that kind of gear to firewire would be kind of useless and would require a lot more rack space than the pci solution.

LE gear is a one-unit system, so it's just the same if it's a pci or firewire device. with HD gear however digi follows the ancient rule: "unless there is not a good enough reason for a change, don't change it"; why would digi have to change their HD hardware? but with LE hardware the reason IS there - mobility.

[Infa]

I don't know dude... I've used the two of them.. And I think the 001 is actually a better unit EXCEPT for the 96k thing of coarse..
There is too much fluctuation possiblities with firewire. Bandwidth as you mentioned before IS NOT the issue. I am quite aware of the specs of the two. I just have a gut feeling about this.... We'll see ....

Now I can see the mobility thing for MBox, and MBox only. But the 002 and 001 have no reason to be/go mobile.
They are suppose to be the "mid range" units for Digi. Therefore almost TDM/HD, but still LE. And not trying to be "mobile" like the MBox... But you are right,, they are... And that is why they are suffering, and/or going to be suffering.

Age ol' rule - "I'll take a bigger , thicker cable over a thinner one ANYDAY !!!

But hey, like I said in my original post, I love firewire, and use it everyday, just like you said. But I draw the lines in what I use it for. And my Music for to and fro recording (mainly A/D D/A conversions),,, that is not one of them......

[JFreak]

what's your problem with firewire? don't you realize that the 001 <--> pci card connection is actually a kind of firewire itself, only that it is a dedicated line which no other hardware can use.

now if you dedicate those firewire busses for your equipment, the situation will be just the same - in other words, if you install a dedicated firewire-bridge pci-card into your desktop and plug the 002 into it, how do you think it's different than 001's connection? don't you get it? 001 and 002 are almost identical equipment connection-wise, and neither has zero dsp anywhere; it's just connecting an audio interface into a computer and nothing more.

(and by the way, thicker cables don't mean anything in digital equipment. as long as your equipment works, it works - you will not gain anything by thickening a cable that already works as its thinner incarnation... if there are such severe signall losses that it affects digital gear, it will not get unnoticed.)

[Infa]

if you install a dedicated firewire-bridge pci-card into your desktop and plug the 002 into it, how do you think it's different than 001's connection?



The difference is about 50 more pins for each separate bit of information can have its own "road" to travel down...

And I have no problem with firewire my friend,, like I said, I use it, and I love it, it is GREAT !! ...
But not for the entire info that the 002 has to pass on, mainly (and here is where there can be no arguement) the CLOCK, and jitter issues.....

[tele_player]

Firewire has nothing to do with clock and jitter on the 002, and Firewire 400 has WAY more bandwidth than an 002 can use, even with all channels in use at max sample rate.

I'm 100% behind the switch to Firewire. 002R with Octopre or Digimax and a laptop makes a REAL nice portable rig for lots of applications.



if you install a dedicated firewire-bridge pci-card into your desktop and plug the 002 into it, how do you think it's different than 001's connection?



The difference is about 50 more pins for each separate bit of information can have its own "road" to travel down...

And I have no problem with firewire my friend,, like I said, I use it, and I love it, it is GREAT !! ...
But not for the entire info that the 002 has to pass on, mainly (and here is where there can be no arguement) the CLOCK, and jitter issues.....

[JFreak]

The difference is about 50 more pins



so are you saying that more pins makes a cable better? is it better to route for example DTS multichannel audio in six 2-pin cables (analog) than in one 2-pin cable (digital)? just an example, but proves your point wrong.

[Infa]

so are you saying that more pins makes a cable better? is it better to route for example DTS multichannel audio in six 2-pin cables (analog) than in one 2-pin cable (digital)? just an example, but proves your point wrong.



Doesn't prove me wrong,,, just still proves you don't know what I'm talking about..
I don't want, or need to get into ALL of it which I could,, BUT the bottom line is I'll say AGAIN, IT IS STRICKLY THE CLOCK , I don't trust something like "jitter" through firewire.. Yet anyway, until they come up with the next level of it. And the fact that they do even have firewire 800 , and digi didn't take advantage of that --- LAME---

Also, I mean do you even use BOTH a 001 and a 002 ?? I have, side by side, and I'm telling you I notice a difference, and I'm speaking from experience, NOT emotion as you are..

The 002 is actually better than the 001 in more ways than the 001 is better than the 002, BUT in the (very few) ways that the 002 falls short from the 001, I can blame those on the firewire vs the real wire...

Please don't tell me you haven't noticed the 002 is SLOWER, and more sluggish than the 001 ... It seems everyone knows that.
I blame that partly on OS X, partly on 6.whatever your running, and partly on FIREWIRE..

I have also noticed a wierd little latency delay, type of wierd ordeal with the 002, which the 001 does not have at all, which I totally blame 100% on Firewire.. The 002 is not as "responsive" as the 001, I blame that on Firewire as well..

Remember when USB first came out,??, it was suppose to be the LAST,,, that was it !!! That was all they needed to invent they said, it's the Universal Serial Bus, nothing will top it, Mac, and PC users can use it alike... Well look how USB looks now,,, pretty slow aye, compared to Firewire.... Well the same thing will happen, and we will all look back and say "I can't believe Digi made a (supposedly) Pro Audio studio recording system (DAW) that was only able to be hooked up by a Firewire plug......

Anyway,, thats my 90 cents on the matter--

[JFreak]

well, do YOU have any idea what you are talking about? do you understand your clocks?

002 doesn't have to clock sync with computer, as it's a firewire device and firewire has its own clock. if the 002 loses sync with firewire, protools will raise an error, but otherwise when it works there is nothing to worry about.

then there's the audio interface's external clock that the device uses to sync with other digital equipment you may or may not have. as the 002 does not have word clock i/o, it will have to depend on adat clock, and route that to spdif i/o also. this is what you probably knew already, and this is the clock that contributes to the sound you are recording, as the sound quality gets bad if there's a clock problem.

so what clock are you referring to, when you don't trust it? if the 002 is not in sync with firewire, protools will stop working, but otherwise it's ok. this is not the reason why 002 "seems slower" than 001, the reason for that is 100% because digi has had years to optimize 001 drivers and the 002 has only been around a year-or-so. i however am not currently feeling any slowness at all with my 1.25GHz powerbook running 10.3.4 and 6.4 with 002R. not even with heavy (+70%) cpu loads.

you however have one valid point: without firewire 001 will not be affected by apple firewire drivers (which by the way have been bad in panther until 10.3.4 version). with 002 and firewire connection digi has to live with whatever apple releases, so some os versions might not pass digi specs because of that.

and no, usb is not competing with firewire and vice versa. not any more than bluetooth is competing with wifi or satellite feeds. there have always been different ways to connect slow and fast devices, and while some 10 years ago (when pci was the only means of getting enough bandwidth in a personal computer) fast connections had to be done with proprietary pci cards, today the same thing can be done with simple and standard firewire. what's wrong with that?

digi keeps optimizing its 002 drivers and the thing will get snappier. that's the bottom line; 001 is not fast because of its proprietary pci card but because years of work behind its drivers.

[Infa]

Agreed... And what I meant by clock was the clock you are referring to when you say "it will give an error if it thinks it is NOT o.k." --- Well I know that. But what I'm saying is even when it's telling you it's O.K., and not giving you an error, and running fine. That thing IS NOT O.K. -- It's jitter rate is way to high thanks to firewire. Sure it works, it even works to "up to their specs" , but it still ain't that great,, and thats due to firewire..

And thats what I mean, (when you referred to the 001 being around for a while, and the 002 not, so the 001 was a little more stable) --- I mean that's what I mean,, I'm tired of these companies releasing products TO DAMN EARLY, just to start selling them. They should do them years of testing FIRST.. Then sell them once they are sooooo 100% flawless that it makes are heads spin !!!!!

Thanks for the great debate JFreak,,,, but this is getting old,, so this will be my last post on this thread......

Good Luck with your 002 and lap top--

[tele_player]

Again you're saying jitter is high because of Firewire.
Wrong. THE CLOCK IS NOT GOING OVER FIREWIRE. The Firewire is not causing jitter.

I'll also add that I've never seen any test reports on the actual jitter on 001, 002, Mbox... it can be measured.



. That thing IS NOT O.K. -- It's jitter rate is way to high thanks to firewire. Sure it works, it even works to "up to their specs" , but it still ain't that great,, and thats due to firewire..

[Infa]

I WROTE:

but this is getting old,, so this will be my last post on this thread

O.k. (he he) just one more


Tele player WROTE:

Again you're saying jitter is high because of Firewire.
Wrong. THE CLOCK IS NOT GOING OVER FIREWIRE. The Firewire is not causing jitter.
I'll also add that I've never seen any test reports on the actual jitter on 001, 002, Mbox... it can be measured.


Ahhhh, the Master of the Telecaster... (waz up buddy?)
Anyway, if I plug sound into the 002, and THE ONLY WAY that 002 communicates with Pro Tools track recording is through Firewire,, tell me in gods name how the clock is NOT traveling through the firewire cord..
Pro Tools records in zero's and 1's , as we all know. It does not record the actual sound itself (again as we all know) , so if the sound is going into the 002 there is a converter in there(crappy one at that) that turns your sound into a digital signal, then that digital signal can travel through the FIREWIRE cable to Pro Tools. NOW how a digital signal travels through something and is KEPT UP TO PAR , is with a great clock. So some sort of "clockwork" is traveling through that firewire cord no matter what anyone trys to say. Zero's and 1's (digital signal) can NOT travel anywhere, or through anything with out a clock. And that clock needs/should be the most awesome one you can have, and should be able to pass through the most highest quality path it can...And a firewire cord is NOT that... The clock/jitter rate is the most detrimental equation to a superior digital sound recording.

And get this... seriously think about it. Even though the 002/MBox was designed for mobility, so that was probably the reason digi did the firewire thing for them. AND TDM/HD was not centered around mobility, and therefore that is (supposedly) the only reason why them systems DO NOT use firewire (as Jfreak said earlier).... Think about this... If firewire is (supposedly) equivelent to the good ol' 001/TDM/HD connection cable, but yet it (firewire) IS alot cheaper (obviously), then whether it be moble OR NOT Digi would have used the Firewire cable for the HD system just mainly because it would be a hell of alot cheaper FOR THEM (which we know they care about, and WOULD HAVE done).... But since they didn't, it is a obvious thing that the PCI hardwired to your system with that cable set up is ALOT more trusted, stable, and therefore higher quality than Firewire....

Seriously STOP,,,,,,,,,,, clear your head from the emotion based thoughts,,,,,, take a deep breath,,,,,,, and now think about the last paragraph I just said intelligently, logically and unbias (fairly)................ please .............

[tele_player]

When we talk about jitter, and its effect on digital audio, we're talking about the jitter on the clock which drives the converters. This clock is not sent over the Firewire. The Firewire is used as a networking system, to transfer the sample data. The actual sample clock is internal to the 002, as it is on any firewire interface, such as MOTU 828, Metric Halo ULN-2 or 2882, etc.

As long as the firewire stream keeps up with sending and receiving the data, the converters (A/D and D/A) are happy. If something goes wrong on the Firewire, ProTools knows it fell behind, and stops. It's inconvenient and annoying, but it doesn't introduce jitter in the converters.

Yes, there is a clock used in the actual Firewire transfer, but it's not the same thing. Jitter in that clock is handled in a very different way, and doesn't affect the data unless something goes disastrously wrong.

You brought up ProTools HD - the issues there are significantly different, but that's not about jitter, either. Even with HD systems, the sample clock is in the interface, or if you're using multiple interfaces, you sync the sample clocks via word clock.

This isn't my emotion based thoughts, you're just mistaken about how this works.

[DJ Insomaniac]

wow, i suddenly get syncing

It all makes sense if you think about it. If the clock was created on your computer, then why would you have to sync multiple interfaces? If everything was recieved coming in from the computer, each piece of gear getting a clock feed from the CPU, don't you think it would have an adverse effects on the DA/AD performace while the CPU or DSP crunched numbers?

Wouldn't you start getting intesnly unstable sampling rates when you toss on a reverb or two?

Now, you ask why TDM systems don't use FireWire... well then they wouldn't be TDM, then would they? They a built to move HUGE amounts of audio data and use onboard DSP. You use DSP on the PCI cards to take a huge amount of the load OFF of the computer. Firewire would shove all that data right onto your CPU, not to menthion clog up the FW bus.

[tele_player]

TDM systems could use Firewire, or something like it, to transfer the data to/from the interfaces. One probably reason they don't is that the basic design predates the availability of appropriate devices like single-chip Firewire interfaces. MOTU use something which is similar to Firewire, but in a point-to-point mode, with their PCI424 card. Electrically, it's like Firewire, but it runs a different communications protocol.

And it just occurred to me to add - sample clock is sent over S/PDIF and ADAT Lightpipe links, and though they are both serial protocols, like Firewire, they are point-to-point, a link between exactly two devices.

[Bender]

At work I use a mix system with a Sony DMX R100 but at home I have a 002 with my iMac.
No firewire no work.