I went to Radio Shack today to buy a Firewire 400 cable and they didn't carry any. The clerk told me Firewire is on it's way out, and that USB 2.0 is faster! He didn't seem to know what Firewire 800 was when I asked. I told him he was wrong, that Firewire is faster and he kept treating me like an idiot. I left. Am I crazy or is this guy a ****ing jackoff? Or was it my fault for going to Radio Shack?

the USB 2.0 spec is 480Mbits/second, while the Firewire400 spec is 400Mbits/second. Firewire800, is, of course, 800Mbits/second... we use Firewire 800 drives all the time here at our studio, they work great, with Macs.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone with a USB 2.0 drive. USB 1.0 maybe. Just don't see them around. I'd say firewire is here to stay. Rock solid! (with Macs anyway)

Aaron

http://www.barefeats.com/usb2.html

Radio Shack is fine, by the way. The quality of the help runs the gamut, though. I used to live near a Radio Shack that had a real Mr. Wizard working there. You can get almost anything at a Radio Shack in an emergency. Just expect to pay double for stuff like XLR connectors.

i second the conclusions in max's link. i've got a lacie d2 w/ the triple interface. the same drive on the same machine is MUCH slower when connected via usb 2.0. firewire isn't going anywhere. what's out there that's better? maybe if bluetooth gets fast?

--jon

Well i think that Mac never bother to implement the USB 2 protocole as well as PC did.
That´s the reason why there are not many USB2 audio interfaces, the ones that have been made run only on PC, one is the EDirol UA1000 wich is a real good interface, the other behringer bca 2000 which is areal dog.

and why would they? apple developed and pioneered firewire. if they can save money by implementing usb 2.0 cheaply, at the cost of performance, certainly that's what they'd choose to do.

for me, firewire is for hard drives & things that require data to move quickly. usb is for printers, keyboards, etc. i'm very happy with how each does its job.

--jon

Thanks Gang! I wasn't aware that USB 2.0 worked so much better on PC, that's certainly why they'd have it at Radio Shack then.

Thanks Aaron for the explanation!
So I guess the MBox is USB 1.0??...would it be too hard to make it USB 2.0 and end with the latency issues?

I have experienced better results streaming from firewire400 than USB2.0, however when transfering files, USB2.0 is slightly faster. But I think a lot of it has to do with the hard drive itself, and the firewire/USB controllers.

I have 2 Matroxx both with USB2 and firewire.
The cooll thing about FW is that they can be connected serialy while USB only in parallel.
FW is software driven and i guess a little more resource needy regarding CPU, it also hogs the PCI BUS.
FW and USB don´t figth each other, they are complementary, i only wish that USB2 get more attention from Audio interface manufacturers as it can stream and record enough (16 or more) tracks simultaniously.
nevertheless both are here to stay, can´t say the same about PCI and PCI-X since Mac are going to run on Intel chips soon...

been using USB 2.0 with a SSHD just fine. no clue about faster or slower, but it works without producing artifacts on my tracks.

(yes, on a PC, not mac)