New Firewire Standard Approved

Frodo · Post by **Frodo** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 3:02 pm

http://standards.ieee.org/announcements/ieee1394.html

I'm among those who've not been too tickled with firewire performance in general. While I'm still hoping for independent firewire buses for 400 and 800 ports on Mac hardware to come, I've found the news of the 3.2Gps standard to be good news and more than a step in the right direction.

kgdrum · Post by **kgdrum** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 4:42 pm

very cool .........potentially

Macinbowl · Post by **Macinbowl** » Sat Aug 02, 2008 6:48 am

Does that means that someday, maybe soon, we will be able to record 64 track out of a single wire on a single hard drive (i.e. 15K SAS drive) ??

Maybe we're still far from that but if all these specs were available on a Macbook Pro, I would be happy!

just dreaming...

Frodo · Post by **Frodo** » Sat Aug 02, 2008 1:13 pm

I would hope that would be the idea. I would also hope that this would ease the strain of running hi-res audio across firewire... and even video concurrently.

mhschmieder · Post by **mhschmieder** » Sat Aug 02, 2008 3:14 pm

That's good news; thanks for posting that.

We nevertheless decided a while back to go with Ethernet, due to flexible topology, scalability, and proven reliability (decades of use in telecom).

In the consumer space, as well as the prosumer space, this is heartening to hear, though, as Ethernet is not yet accepted in that space (it's a bit intimidating for most people, who have to learn about Ethernet hubs and how to set them up).

Firewire's real competition isn't Ethernet though: it's USB. Firewire has proven itself over and over again to be better for audio than USB due to more consistent packet addressing and throughput (regardless of which speeds of the protocols are used). The Wintel world seems to want to kill Firewire though. And Apple has given mixed signals about whether it is now a Prosumer-only vs. Consumer-level protocol.

Frodo · Post by **Frodo** » Sat Aug 02, 2008 4:41 pm

mhschmieder wrote: Firewire's real competition isn't Ethernet though: it's USB. Firewire has proven itself over and over again to be better for audio than USB due to more consistent packet addressing and throughput (regardless of which speeds of the protocols are used). The Wintel world seems to want to kill Firewire though. And Apple has given mixed signals about whether it is now a Prosumer-only vs. Consumer-level protocol.

Yes, at least where audio is concerned, there is no comparison between fw and USB.

But outside of audio, I'm not sure quite what's going on with FW at large. Apple pushed for this connectivity and them removed it from iPod altogether, which indicated that there might have been something less practical about it then even they thought.

Yet, getting this new fw standard approved may have been Apple's attempt to *try* to defend fw's viability where SO many things have come to rely upon it.

If Ethernet takes over then the entire techno climate changes. That brand new FireFace could eventually be replaced with an EtherFace, and those shiny new MOTU 800-series and Lite boxes could prove to be more cumbersome than convenient over time....

... that is unless firewire and ethernet chisel out their own unique paths for the sake of their respective longevity. I don't get the sense that this trend will move too quickly, though... unless you have some other insights that I've missed?

mhschmieder · Post by **mhschmieder** » Sat Aug 02, 2008 6:27 pm

Whatever the future of firewire, I think the usefulness of current firewire devices will outlive that of current PCI boards (regardless of which flavour of PCI).

Our pro audio shop is even recommending people buy the firewire versions of mid-to-high-end audio interfaces and just getting a PCI card to give it a dedicated bus (for those who have a MacPro or a Wintel machine). That way, only the firewire card has to be upgraded when the PCI format changes yet again.

There was an unnecessary panic a few months back when someone issued a lawsuit claiming ownership over all PCI and PCI-derived technologies. I never heard followup on that, but I don't think the computer technology firms are running scared.

That's it for now; it's taking several seconds for each word to show up on the screen as I type. I guess SpeedDownload ensures even uploads don't get priority while it's busy

.