hello there,
i may need to get a new interface and after hours of looking on the internet i’ve looked at the differences between firewire, usb and pci but still aint sure how the info i’ve picked up would relate to my usage, for example,
usb is considerd inferior to firewire because its transfer rate of 480mb is actually much less and it also varies alot,
would this drawback affect someone like me who only records 1 track at a time and would only use about 7 or 8 audio tracks and 5 or 6 midi tracks (mostly ez drummer and halion one)
when it comes to firewire and usb latency can be an issue and hardware monitoring may need to be used, how would i work around recording vsti’s where hardware monitoring cant be used ?
i know the drivers will play the biggest part here but as far as the connections themselves go, is there a difference in latency between firewire and usb ?
would a pci express firewire card provide lower latency than a pci one ?
one of the interfaces ive looked at is the esi esp1010e, more i/o than i need but it is pci express an it is cheap (£130) but cant find any reviews on it, i’d worry about the audio quality of this, would that be justified or is esi a brand you can trust ?
if i picked an interface based on the i/o that i need and the reviews ive read then i would get the tc electronics desktop konnekt 6, but im unsure about using firewire, i’ve always used pci, the latency regarding using vsti’s is putting me off more than anything
it may help you to help me to know my pc so here it is,
gigabyte ga-ma78gm-s2h motherboard
amd phenom 9850+quadcore 2.5ghz 4mb cache
4 gig ddr2 ram
onboard graphics only (ati radeon)
xp home but will buy win7 eventually
thanks for any help.