OK supposing you now have a powerful desktop PC, Mac or Laptop that you plan to use for your home recordings. You are now deciding which type of audio interface to buy: USB or a Firewire audio interface?
First you should know is that you cannot simply buy any of these types and hope for the best. You need to examine a lot of factors before deciding which one to buy. These factors will be thoroughly discussed in this blog post. Hopefully at the end of this post, you now have a clear idea what type of audio interface you are going to use.
Criteria #1: Does your computer supports Firewire or USB connectivity?
For example, here in Cebu Philippines, you can hardly find a laptop or a ready-made PC with built-in Firewire connections (as of Oct 2011). I went to big malls and PC shop but cannot easily find one. You can have a Firewire connection if you buy a motherboard that supports Firewire or accepts PCI Firewire card then assemble the desktop PC. This can be costly. It will even get harder for laptops; it is because I seldom find one with built-in Firewire connection except for those very expensive laptops. One method though is to make sure the laptop includes an express card slot on it. You can then have Firewire connectivity by simply plugging an Express Firewire card
This goes to say that a majority of latest computers being released strongly supports USB connectivity over Firewire. A USB audio interface is an advantage in this case because most PC supports USB.
Criteria #2: How many tracks do you plan to record at once?
This is important. On my experience, Firewire audio interface are often designed to handle simultaneous multi-channel recordings of more than 4 tracks at once (essential for recording a live band). The primary reason is that Firewire is significantly faster than USB 1.1. If USB 1.1 is used for these types of recordings, the bandwidth or data transfer rate are not enough to handle this amount of simultaneous tracking.
However since the release of USB 2.0 and even the new version USB 3.0, data transfer rates is now the comparable or even faster than the native Firewire. But you need to make sure that your PC or laptop supports recent USB versions (such as USB 2.0). This can be checked by this procedure:
1.) Go to Control panel – Device Manager.
2.) Expand “Universal Serial Bus controllers”, you should see a word “Enhanced” or “Hi-speed” in there. If not, your entire USB ports are still using the old version 1.1. If you see the word enhanced, then it is using USB 2.0.
USB 2.0 controllers
If you now have USB 2.0, there are USB audio interfaces that can accept up to 8 simultaneous recordings provided they are connected via USB 2.0. But you have fewer choices out there for a USB 2.0 audio interface with a lot of inputs compared to a Firewire audio interface with the same amount of inputs.
Even if you are using USB 2.0, there is still a catch. At the similar speed with USB 2.0, Firewire considerably uses a lower CPU and memory usage on your PC. With this, it is even more advantageous to have an ASIO Firewire audio interface because an ASIO driver does not put strenuous task on your PC CPU and memory resources.
This implies that for a lot of inputs (such as an ambitious multi-track recording project), a Firewire audio interface is an advantage because of lower system resources usage and offering a fast data transfer rates.
Criteria #3: Price and Flexibility
Firewire audio interface is slightly expensive compared to their USB audio interface counterparts. Probably because most high-end audio interface manufacturers are using Firewire connections with numerous inputs. USB audio interface is always available in the low budget range typically for those that are looking and recording two channels at a time.
Regarding flexibility, there will be more issues with USB audio interface. Since most external devices that are to be connected to your PC are using USB nowadays, chances are when you are connecting another USB device (for example a 1 TB external hard drive) it will consume and steal a lot of bandwidths from your USB audio interface.
Although this problem can solve by using a dedicated USB controller to audio interface, it can be tricky to do because your PC might be operating around a single USB controller.
This problem can be avoided with Firewire audio interface. It is because if you plug a Firewire audio interface, then the entire Firewire bandwidth will be dedicated to playback and recording without any conflicts. Even if you plug a high bandwidth USB device, it won’t affect with the Firewire audio interface bandwidth because they are on different connections.
Since most PC has USB slots on them, if you want a dedicated audio processing (for recording and playback); then you should be utilizing your Firewire ports for connecting the audio interface while you will be using the USB slots for other devices (printers, mouse, external hard drive, cameras, etc.). This can avoid the bandwidth limitation issues with USB that can affect latency, recording quality and playback.
The bottom line in the selection process between USB and Firewire audio interface is to determine which one works for your needs. In every decision made based on the above factors, there is always some trade-off. For example, you sacrifice high cost by investing a multi-channel Firewire audio interface and spending a higher budget on your PC so that you can take advantage of what Firewire can offer. Or if you do not want to upgrade your PC or buy any new hardware because of budget constraints and would just stick to USB audio interface despite some issues with USB 1.1, bandwidth constraints or CPU/memory usage. It is all about knowing these pros and cons so that you can determine which one really works for you.
Content last updated on August 5, 2012