Is firewire that much better than USB?

[rimshot609]

Is firewire that much better than USB2?

[amplidood]

Is firewire that much better than USB2?

Yes.

[billf]

Is firewire that much better than USB2?

Absolutely, especially if it is Firewire 800. Why do you ask?

[RonaldDumsfeld]

No.

Provided they have been set up correctly and the supporting hardware and software is working to spec you will obviously not be able to hear an audible difference and the effective throughput is very similar and far in excess of what you will reasonably need except in extreme circumstances.

Firewire has the disadvantage of possible chipset incompatability.

USB has a possible disadvantage in that it is more difficult (but far from impossible) to avoid resource conflicts (i.e. shared IRQs or hubs etc).

[BradLyons]

Yes firewire indeed IS better than USB in everything from disk-throughput, long sustain, ramp-speed, latency, headroom in gain structure, etc.

[bayswater]

Is firewire that much better than USB2?

Better in what way? Faster, more stable, more compatible, cheaper, durable, less error prone, ... What's the actual decision you need to make?

[RonaldDumsfeld]

The 'Firewire is intrinsically better than USB' meme came about 2 or three years ago when it was effectively Firewire 400 vs USB 1.

At that time USB 1.1 was barely capable of coping with more than 4 channels simultaneously so Firewire was the obvious choice. With USB 2.0 now being common this is no longer true.

In fact USB 2.0 now offers a greater throughput (480 vs 400) and new USB devices actually outperform their Firewire equivalents. Check out the figures for the RME Fireface 400 and the USB 2.0 version the Fireface UC. The UC has lower latency.

I run an Ultralite Hybrid and since MOTU fixed the USB driver in March this year any differences, if they exist fall below my ability to detect.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

The real question is what are you using it for? If you are streaming audio and/or video Firewire is better than USB 1 & 2, which will choke on larger data streams. eSATA even better than that. If you're just transferring documents or backing up and don't care how long it takes, then USB is just fine.

But don't take my or anyone else's word for it. Demo the various devices if you can. Here is a pretty sober statement. Notice the URL name. Then notice what they say about Firewire.

http://www.usb-ware.com/firewire-vs-usb.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[BradLyons]

The 'Firewire is intrinsically better than USB' meme came about 2 or three years ago when it was effectively Firewire 400 vs USB 1.

At that time USB 1.1 was barely capable of coping with more than 4 channels simultaneously so Firewire was the obvious choice. With USB 2.0 now being common this is no longer true.

In fact USB 2.0 now offers a greater throughput (480 vs 400) and new USB devices actually outperform their Firewire equivalents. Check out the figures for the RME Fireface 400 and the USB 2.0 version the Fireface UC. The UC has lower latency.

I run an Ultralite Hybrid and since MOTU fixed the USB driver in March this year any differences, if they exist fall below my ability to detect.

Ronald,

ON PAPER, USB2.0 out-performs FW400 in terms of thruput. BUT in the real world when it comes to hard-drive performance, there's no question that FW400 is FAR better than USB2.0. USB moves information in packets, it has to ramp-up speed and it does not stay consistant in that transmission packet over time. I design INSANE amounts of recording systems and talk to even more people on a daily basis. I don't know of one single person that is using a USB drive for audio or video use, streaming from the drive with zero issues. In fact about 20-minutes ago I just got off the phone with a client of mine trying to figure out why his $2800 laptop can't play 6-channels of audio without stopping. Well, he was using a USB2 hard-drive.... turns out that drive also has FW400 on it, I asked him to plug in the FW port instead and he immediately noticed the difference.

Personally, I deal with LARGE amounts of data.... I don't trust a USB drive even for file transfer, I will still use firewire as it's more stable.

IF we're talking audio interfaces, USB has higher latency, less power and headroom for built-in mic-pres (such as the case between the Apogee ONE and DUET, there is about 15dB less gain between them). USB2 is just fine for hard-drives for storage, smaller backups, etc. But for audio or video use, they are BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD. For audio interfaces, they are fine DEPENDING upon how it's being used.

[bayswater]

In fact USB 2.0 now offers a greater throughput (480 vs 400) and new USB devices actually outperform their Firewire equivalents.

This is true only in theory. The maximum theoretical speeds are 480 and 400. (By analogy, the actual amount of space on a CD is 1G, not 700M).

But these don't take into account overhead and a lot of other factors that limit the actual sustained throughput you will get. USB requires more overhead that FW. FW also uses up less of the processing resources of a computer, so again, in real situations, it will actually get stuff done faster. On an Intel Mac, USB 2 will get around 75% of the average throughput of FW. On PPC Macs, USB is a lot worse.

But, in my experience, USB is not as fussy as FW about compatibility, and doesn't suffer as much from contention.

BTW, I've never heard anyone base the comparison on FW versus USB 1.

This old debate will start up again when we have USB 3 and FW 3200. It would be so much better if everyone all agreed on one basic hardware layer standard, and then put their efforts into improving the efficiency and reliability of the transport layer

[Phil O]

...But for audio or video use, they are BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD. For audio interfaces, they are fine DEPENDING upon how it's being used.

So what's your take on the new MOTU (Microbook) release? Do you think the USB implementation will be good, or should they have gone firewire?

Phil

[BradLyons]

Hey Phil, how's it going? For the MicroBook, USB makes sense because of the market it's intended for.

[RonaldDumsfeld]

I have 30 years experience as a software engineer and I still say 'Firewire is always better than USB 2.0' is an outdated meme.

The latest generation of USB 2.0 devices at least equals their Firewire equivalents for most practical purposes. The RME Fireface 400 vs RME Fireface UC is an current example.

Then again I am sure none of us wants one of those silly tit for tat rows so I'm quite happy not to press such a trivial point.

I do note that all you guys who still strongly prefer Firewire appear to be primarily Mac users. So maybe there is something in that and Apple might even favour Firewire as they developed it themselves from the old SCSI HD interface and in effect can control development.

That in itself suggests a new PC user would be well advised to start out with a generic standard. USB 3.0 will be the way to go fairly shortly.


Also PC users on average are probably more tech savvy so they know how to avoid IRQ, port, controller, device conflicts which are admittedly the bane of old or underpowered implementations. On the other hand with Firewire you always risk the dreaded TI chip compatability issue.

[bayswater]

I have 30 years experience as a software engineer and I still say 'Firewire is always better than USB 2.0' is an outdated meme.

The latest generation of USB 2.0 devices at least equals their Firewire equivalents for most practical purposes. The RME Fireface 400 vs RME Fireface UC is an current example.

I'm basing my conclusions (USB at 75% of FW) on numerous real world tests conducted by various members of this group http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/macsupportcentral/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; on Intel macs (as well as my own 30 years). As you suggest this may be specific to Macs, but there are one or two Mac users on this list.

[BradLyons]

I can freeze and lockup USB drives in no-time, firewire---I can't. My clients call me with hard-drive issues that are using USB, I set them up with firewire and the problem is gone. I've had clients that have drives with both USB2.0 and Firewire that were using USB with problems, moving to firewire solved them. You do not find a great deal of large-scale multi-channel USB interfaces for a reason v/s firewire. Donald, absolutely no disrespect meant to you at all here..... but I see these systems, users, and talk even further on this stuff than what anyone else sees here due to my position and the amount of people I talk to daily (about 100-per day). I would bet my life, my house, and everything I own that firewire will outperform USB2.0 every time when it comes to lots of thruput and data. Maybe on paper it doesn't, maybe in software design it doesn't, but when it comes to audio and video--there is no comparison, it's not even close.