OK well low latency recording is really the primary / only reason a hobbyist or semi pro would want to chose anything besides USB. Unfortunately your Motherboard & BIOS must support thunderbolt - so you can't just add a PCIe thunderbolt card to any computer :( I think thunderbolt interfaces will be the future of the higher end stuff. Staying at 24-bit/48kHz, consider a more realistic real-world USB 2 bandwidth of 240Mbps (a slightly conservative figure, giving us plenty of overhead to allow for the connection limitations discussed earlier): you’d still have the ability to work with up to 40 channels of broadcast-quality audio simultaneously!Īnyway if the latency of USB is really a problem for you then you are going to need to spend money on a thunderbolt - which probably means a new computer. At the theoretical maximum USB 2 bandwidth, you’d be able to record just over 40 tracks of 24-bit, 96kHz audio, while halving the sample rate to 48kHz would give you 80 tracks. Let’s translate that into more practical audio terms. The USB 2 specification states that it has the ability to transmit data at up to 480Mbps, but due to bus constraints, the way the data is handled, and designers leaving headroom to ensure the best possible results in day-to-day use, even a well-designed USB 2 interface is likely to have a throughput closer to 280Mbps. USB 2 offers plenty for most home-studio applications.
#BEST FIREWIRE AUDIO INTERFACE 2013 FULL#
Your information is woefully out of date and whatever you are thinking is mostly wrong, I don't know what you were thinking about perhaps USB 1.0?!?!Ī single USB 2.0 Audio Interface has enough bandwidth to record 40+ channels of full broadcast / mastering quality audio! What do you guys use? Is it ok to record and produce using a USB/Firewire audio interface, or would I see a latency issue? I mainly record single track vocals, and use the audio card's asio driver. When I shop around, there are not many PCI Express audio cards on popular sites like and, and the ones that are there are $500+, while USB/Firewire cards have a huge selection. My thinking is that PCI Express is greater than USB/Firewire because it's a direct bus to the motherboard, and typically associated with high performance, while USB/Firewire I believe is the opposite. I bought an M-Audio Delta series PCI card about 10 years ago, and it's worked great, but I'd like to get a new card that uses PCI Express. When I think of USB or Firewire, I think of slow and latency, but since these seem so popular, that may not be the case.
What's the current standard for audio interfaces on PCs? It looks like the main thing you can purchase is a USB or Firewire audio interface.