USB vs. Firewire

[GuitarBilly]

Which one do you prefer and why?

[Ostinato Rubato]

thread relevant to interests. awaiting smarter bros than me to respond with teh knowledge.

[Ry Manchu]

USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 have reached price parity. So there is no advantage to USB 2.0

USB 3.0 is practically a universal standard for powered peripherals. Advantage USB
USB 3.0 kicks Firewire 800's ass six ways from Sunday in every quantifiable speed comparison. Advantage USB

eSata and Thunderbolt are superior for multichannel HD video streaming, but they suck at powering peripherals, cost more and don't have 100,000 devices per day manufactured supporting them.

At work I've been recording two 5 megapixel 15/fps cameras to 4TB external HDs from a server via USB 3.0 for 7 months and it has been working flawlessly. We're making a stop motion movie with it. Every time that a HD fills, I copy it and send it off for editing.

[nightflameauto]

Meh to the MEEEEEEHHHHHHHH.

When Firewire first hit, the difference between USB and Firewire was like the difference between IDE and SCSI. Serial/parallel, improved multi-read, blah blah blah.

Now the real difference is do you want all the tax or your processor (USB) or possibly offloaded to a separate device (some firewire, no longer all).

I will just say I've noticed a difference whether I run my interface and my external hard disk on the same interface or different interfaces. I still prefer firewire for my interface and USB (2 or 3) for my external recording drive purely for separation of tasks. But I'm an old fucker that actually tries to think shit out with technology. With modern speeds and the fact I rarely record more than three tracks at any given time, I doubt it means shit in the grand scheme of things.

I'd be extremely interested in trying Thunderbolt for my interface. I have a system capable of it now, but it'll be a good long time before I can afford a new interface that could truly take advantage of it. As such, I'll stick with my piddly firewire interface/USB 3.0 recording drive.

[newholland]

firewire works fine for me, but honestly-- it'd be nice to have laptops i could throw a pci card in anymore.. they don't seem to make 'em!

but now that i'm working with a desktop-- shit.. it doesn't really matter.. loads of room for cards, and it's just as easy to pick up my box and haul it with me.

haven't spent any time with USB or thunderbolt-- but for my track counts.. i can't see thunderbolt as necessary. it IS nice to have daisy chainable inputs with firewire though-- so i have cheap expandability!

[nakedzen]

Doesn't matter at all. Firewire works just fine for me, even my 6 years old laptop with a broken fan that we use for drum recording could handle 16 tracks in at a time.

[RustyMetal]

It doesn't matter.

When it was USB 2.0 vs Firewire, usb was faster even though MacHeads could always find some voodoo logic why Firewire was always a little better. pffft Now that Thunderbolt and USB 3 is out, it doesn't matter even more. They can essentially transfer faster than your computer can effectively process. So it really comes down to your choice in platforms and devices. I much prefer the PC platform because it is so much more upgradeable and changeable/mod'able. So choose the platform you like and build from there with confidence.