Which bus is best for audio?

[Audiacc]

hi everyone.

I am trying to find a definite answer to the following question:
Which of following busses is best for audio:

-PCI
-PCMCIA
-USB
-Firewire

It surely depends somewhat on implementation but considering implemenation is good which one would be the best for audio purposes? Data transfer speed and lack of transfer errors are the main criteria, I guess... So which one?
Which comes second, which comes third. And why?
I do not seek cards or brands recommendation. Let's keep this discussion brand unspecific, if possible.

 

[t3031999]

Since all of these buses are digital it would make very little difference sound wise. Most high quality cards will have checksums and error correction as well as collision avoidance on the bus itself. So speed is the primary concern, but the speed of all of them should be able to easily support audio data.

I would prefer a PCI or ISA card in a desktop computer because there is far less chance that the connection will loosen.

Most cards for real-time audio analysers I have seen are on the ISA bus, not because ISA is better than others, but it was the most stable and most available when they designed the card and these things are way to complex to redesign for every new format.

Edit:
I have always wanted to see a external sound card on the ethernet format. That way you could have the sound card in a rack in a completely different room and have a standard cabling method to access it. Also there could be multiple computers connected to it, such as a PC and a mac at the same time. It would also be easy to write add a music server into the driver software.

 

[jcPanny]

Digital audio signal

The PC busses you list above are not relavant to the quality of an audio signal (unless your receiver has a firewire input). A digital audio connection uses the SPDIF format and an optical or coax cable. Look for a card for PC that is capable of a bit perfect PCM or DTS signal such as this inexpensive one from Chaintech.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006SWJ4Q/ref=sr_11_1/102-1055522-2164167?%5Fencoding=UTF8

I have read good things about this card and plan to use it to turn my PC into an audio sever for files stored in FLAC.

 

[Reorx]

PCI - 133mhz, 32bit, 133Mbps
Firewire - 400 / 800
USB2 - 480Mbps
PCMCIA - 20-33Mhz, 32bit, 132Mbps peak

This is not a easy question.
PCMCIA is the suck. you can put that at the bottom of the list right away.
If Firewire / USB2 are built into the motherboard and connect directly to the south bridge, it'll be faster then normal PCI slot / cards.
If it's a Firewire / USB2 card...It depends on weither or not it's plugged into a PCI slot or a newer PCI-X.

I'd choose a motherboard with Firewire built in because it's been around longer, and seems to be more mature then USB. Firewire 800 to be more specific.

MAC users live and breath firewire 400/800, and they love their AV

Hope this helps.

Reorx

 

[jonnythan]

Interesting that PCMCIA is "the suck" even though it is capable of delivering 100 times the bandwidth needed for CD audio.

 

[Audiacc]

Thanks for the replies so far

To sum up what has been said so far:

1) PCMCIA and PCI have lower bandwidths then USB2/Firewire800
2) PCMCIa sux (but we do not why)
3) Any onboard controllers are better then any bridges

That is perhaps a good starting point but let's go into details

I assume digital connections have its pros and cons for audio depending on whether they are serial or parallel, in case they are serial then if they are synchronous or asynchronous and what is the error connection. But I do not have sufficient knowledge to go in depth.

Surely bandwidth is not a limitation if playing back a CD. But let's consider a situation when someone is producing music and has 24 tracks of audio recorded at 24bit 48 kHz and 10 midi tracks with 2 VSTi plugins each on average. What then? I am not looking at RAM or Hard disks that are known to be bottlrnecks in such scenarios. I am just looking at the interface of a sound card. Which would be capable of efficient handling the largest amount of audio i.e. latency sensitive data?

If you can help, please respond!

MAny Thanks!

 

[jcPanny]

Studio gear

If you are setting up a studio, then you will need a sound card designed for that purpose with multiple MIDI inputs and ouptuts. M-audio is one such manufactuer and they offer, for example, a 10x10 midi with PCI interface and 8x8 midi with USB interface.
By your above statement about the limited bandwidth of audio, I think you have come to the realization that any digital bus is adequate. Cost, features, and ease of use should be the deciding factors on which product you purchase.

 

[Reorx]

I stated PCMCIA sucks because:
It was designed for laptops. Laptops sacrifice speed for portability. Today’s laptops are better, but if you do a direct comparison, desktops are still faster, just not as portable. If you did a speed test using a USB HD and a Laptop motherboard USB vs. PCMCIA USB. The PCMCIA USB would lose.

The order from fastest to slowest busses: Firewire 800, usb2, firewire 400, PCI, PCMCIA.

Just spoke with a co-worker who has done professional studio work for ~15 years. He told me that USB is the best for PC's because of RF interference that is generated within the PC. PCI is susceptible to this interference. Also, most mixers have USB connections.
MAC users love their firewire, and theoretically it is better then USB, but there are not as many firewire devices.

So USB > All when setting up a studio. Though I have seen some studio's setup with PCI sound cards.

I suppose the real answer is like the ones given the most often in these forums. Buy both, do a sound comparison, keep the one you like, return the other.

Reorx

 

[Sheep]

MAC users live and breath firewire 400/800, and they love their AV

Imagine what they will be like with right click!

SheepStar

 

[avnetguy]

The order from fastest to slowest busses: Firewire 800, usb2, firewire 400, PCI, PCMCIA.

Someone is mixing their bits and bytes, check your transfer rates again ... PCI is the fastest in that group.

Steve

 

[ian1386]

Just curious, why does it matter which bus you use? You can get crappy and good soundcards on ALL of those busses...I don't think the bus should be the limiting factor, but instead the soundcard itself.

I would personally go for a USB/Firewire card though, as they are generally most compatible when it comes to upgrading your computer and/or switching between desktop/laptop/etc.

 

[jonnythan]

Someone is mixing their bits and bytes, check your transfer rates again ... PCI is the fastest in that group.

Steve

lol, I didn't even notice.

PCMCIA (CardBus) and PCI are capable of the same bandwidth - 133MB/s, not 133Mb/s

That translates to about 1Gbps, which puts it ahead of all Firewire and USB/USB2 speeds.

Why do you think they put gigabit LAN and Firewire ports on PCI cards?

 

[jonnythan]

Just curious, why does it matter which bus you use? You can get crappy and good soundcards on ALL of those busses...I don't think the bus should be the limiting factor, but instead the soundcard itself.

I would personally go for a USB/Firewire card though, as they are generally most compatible when it comes to upgrading your computer and/or switching between desktop/laptop/etc.

You learned the lesson of the thread. All of them are capable of enough bandwidth for high quality multichannel audio.

 

[jonnythan]

http://www.synchrotech.com/info-pages/firewire-pcmcia.html

"In the case of digital audio, FireWire ® PCMCIA allows more bandwidth than even the most audio-intensive engineer can send at one time. Able to support hundreds of channels of high quality audio and up to 512 MIDI channels."

 

[WmAx]

Just spoke with a co-worker who has done professional studio work for ~15 years. He told me that USB is the best for PC's because of RF interference that is generated within the PC. PCI is susceptible to this interference. Also, most mixers have USB connections.

Your co-worker should pay more attention to actual performance in sound cards in the last few years. It's rather common for decent quality sound cards to be immune from any real issues in this regard. Let's take an extreme example: E-MU 1212M. It performs so well concerning noise, that the noise at essentially at the thermal circuit limits(near -120dB). It's up there with best performing audio recording devices, and it's a PCI card.

-Chris