Thunderbolt for interfaces

[jster]

So it seems like thunderbolt is the way of the future and firewire is on the way out. Thunderbolt is evidently more than 10 times as fast. MOTU is already referring to firewire as "legacy".

Question: How much does this matter?

[jster]

Here is a list of the thunderbolt interfaces on the market now: http://www.sweetwater.com/c1089--Thu...faces/low2high

The words "blazingly fast" keep popping up. According to one apparently knowledgeable fellow on the internets: "Latency is a function of the interface(USB, FW, etc), converter latency(all A>D and D>A converters have a small amount, like 1.2ms), and the buffer setting(powerful computers can run at lower buffer settings for lower latency)"

So it seems like thunderbolt should help reduce latency.

Thoughts?

[kamlapati]

If Firewire is working for you then the increased speed of Thunderbolt shouldn't matter for you.

However, if Firewire support in PC HW and SW goes away, that's a pretty big deal. I plan on keeping my 2011 MBP in decent shape as long as I can.

[jster]

I don't have an interface. So I don't have a baseline for comparison. But I want to buy something and I've been lying on the couch reading the forums all day. What I'm trying to figure out is how much of a difference this technology makes and whether it will bring down prices. The Zoom Tac 2 which is so new it doesn't have any reviews seems to really be designed around Thunderbolt. (I would like something with MIDI though.) The MOTU 828x has Thunderbolt, but I have the suspicion that they just adapted their technology to Thunderbolt rather than designed it with Thunderbolt in mind, so perhaps it won't really be much faster, but I don't really know. Interfaces are bloody expensive and so I'm trying to figure out my play. And all this stuff comes down in price. Logic is 200 bucks now. But it was 1000 bucks a few years ago.

I dragged my feet forever on getting a computer for music and ended up getting both a new mac and a used mac for half of what most people spend on one! So, mulling things over seems to be a good MO for me. I'm actually thinking about selling the new mac to finance the interface. But the used mac (2007) doesn't have Thunderbolt.

But, yes, all the standards come and go. I know that some guys who are using some PCI interfaces cannot use the latest Mac OS versions. And Microsoft stock is up 10% this year. I'm sure dropping support for XP hasn't hurt.

[tribeo]

So it seems like thunderbolt is the way of the future and firewire is on the way out. Thunderbolt is evidently more than 10 times as fast. MOTU is already referring to firewire as "legacy".

Question: How much does this matter?

I am hoping that it matters a lot, at least for me. According to this article (https://www.presonus.com/community/L...-Audio-Latency) there is about 20 ms of latency just in the USB communications. The converter processing is insignificant in comparison. Firewire isn't really much better. That 20ms (plus a few more for processing) is unbearable if I'm trying to use PC-based effects/plugins and listen to it as I play. It's really a shame because I have some cool stuff in my DAW, but it is almost unusable. My only real alternative is to play and monitor 'clean', then add effects later. I haven't looked into all the details of thunderbolt, but I am very hopeful. My one concern is that, like USB and firewire, a lot will depend on individual manufacturers' implementations. Unfortunately, latency is not really a concern for a lot of consumers. Most people are more interested in total bandwidth. There is a subtle difference. When I pluck my string, the time it takes for the signal to make a complete round-trip back to my ears is largely influenced by latency, as long I have 'enough' bandwidth. USB and firewire both provide plenty of bandwidth for that. Most people are more interested in things like downloading videos from their camcorders or transferring files from external hard drives. In those situations, a couple seconds of latency is almost irrelevant as long as the total time is shortened. With larger file sizes, bandwidth is more important than latency. If it used to take 5 minutes to download 100gb, but now it only takes 5 seconds, what does anybody care if the first two seconds are latency? We (audio recordists), have traditionally gotten screwed when manufacturers make decisions about cost-savings and various implementations.

For those of you who are NOT monitoring through your DAW (e.g. plug your guitar into an amp, put a mic in front of the amp, but just listen to the amp directly, no monitoring from DAW), thunderbolt is almost irrelevant. Any modern USB or firewire device will do just fine. They have plenty of bandwidth and you are unaffected by latency.

mulling things over seems to be a good MO for me.

Absolutely. When it comes to technology purchases, you always get the best deal on the best products by waiting as long as you can. Personally, I am waiting to hear how various manufacturers' products perform with regard to latency before I make my next purchase.

[jster]

That's a pretty good article.

But it doesn't really clear up whether Thunderbolt is a game changer.

In that article, the Presonus guys' big "discovery" is that a fully decked out Mac Pro kicks ass and so that you can use their software to lower the USB bus clock latency and send the signal with effects back out for monitoring bypassing the DAW. That gets you down to 3, 5 or 9 ms depending on how good your mac is. Kind of funny that DSP tech in the interface is too expensive, but you are supposed to have a fully decked out Mac Pro to get down to 3ms! And Presonus doesn't have any Thunderbolt intefaces yet.

Some of Avid's propaganda does shed some light however. They write: "Unlike USB- or FireWire-based DAWs, which are inherently prone to latency, Pro Tools|HD Native employs either a high-speed Thunderbolt interface or PCIe core card to connect Pro Tools HD Series interfaces with your laptop or desktop computer. By eliminating distracting monitor latency while recording, increasing your I/O capabilities, and providing 64-bit floating-point processing for more headroom and a higher mix resolution, you get a professional native solution that meets the highest audio standards."

Whoa, that is interesting. It makes it sound like the big mistakes were USB and FireWire. The PCI card had much lower latency!! Could zillions of dollars spent on fancy interfaces have been saved if musicians had just said no to USB and FireWire?!?!

I would like to know how much is the Thunderbolt bus clock latency, if there is such a thing. That Presonus article places plenty of blame on the USB bus clock latency, 12ms worth. But online searching hasn't turned up anything yet for Thunderbolt bus clock latency.

[tribeo]

That's a pretty good article.

But it doesn't really clear up whether Thunderbolt is a game changer.

In that article, the Presonus guys' big "discovery" is that a fully decked out Mac Pro kicks ass and so that you can use their software to lower the USB bus clock latency and send the signal with effects back out for monitoring bypassing the DAW. That gets you down to 3, 5 or 9 ms depending on how good your mac is. Kind of funny that DSP tech in the interface is too expensive, but you are supposed to have a fully decked out Mac Pro to get down to 3ms! And Presonus doesn't have any Thunderbolt intefaces yet.

Whoa, that is interesting. It makes it sound like the big mistakes were USB and FireWire. The PCI card had much lower latency!! Could zillions of dollars spent on fancy interfaces have been saved if musicians had just said no to USB and FireWire?!?!

I would like to know how much is the Thunderbolt bus clock latency, if there is such a thing. That Presonus article places plenty of blame on the USB bus clock latency, 12ms worth. But online searching hasn't turned up anything yet for Thunderbolt bus clock latency.

Yes, PCI is FAR superior....regarding latency. Regarding cost, compatibility, flexibility, convenience...not so much. This is why Pro Tools (really Avid hardware) is so popular in professional recording studios: they can easily deal with the cost, compatibility, flexibility, convenience issues, but they absolutely can not tolerate things like 'latency'.

Regarding the Presonus, to get that 3ms latency, you also have to sacrifice all plugins and most processing. All you can get is some basic eq, compression, reverb and delay. No amp modeling, no overdrive, none of the much more sophisticated effects available in the DAW.

Avid propaganda, Presonus propaganda, Apple propaganda, Sweetwater propaganda, Microsoft propaganda, HP propaganda, Dell propaganda, ad infinitum...
Ideally, you could test out a complete system before making any commitments.

[GaryCorby]

Specialist protocols such as Firewire and Thunderbolt tend to come and go quite quickly. General purpose protocols such as USB hang around much longer. The longer lasting protocols always get more and better quality attention from device driver writers.

This is important! It doesn't matter if your data travels at the speed of light, if the driver at the end is sloppy and inefficient. Which, unfortunately, many of them are. I have a Presonus interface and I'm still waiting on the driver fix for their acknowledged bug that soaks up 5% of all CPU time.

As for using effects on the spot, that's a function of the computer's ability to process real-time, and the ability of the DAW or effects software to make maximum use of the available hardware. There's lots of room for improvement in the software.

[jzucker]

unless you're doing a huge amount of multiple channel, parallel input even regular ole USB2 should be fine with a modern i5 / i7 computer

[jzucker]

i hear you on the presonus drivers. They were horrible back when I was using them. I switched to m-audio which were much better. They actually wrote their own drivers instead of farming them out to india which presonus did but since avid bought m-audio, not sure what the status is...

[jster]

After researching the matter for a while, I have decided that the situation is bleak for anybody looking to buy an interface at this point in time. And that is for two reasons: Thunderbolt and Mavericks. Right now, all the interface manufacturers are having to cope.

A lot of interfaces, for one reason or another, do not work well with the latest Apple OS, Mavericks. When you dig down in the forums and reviews you get lots of crying about drivers. And Avid has told people not to upgrade to Mavericks.

Then there is Thunderbolt. USB is slow. In the past, the top of the line interfaces used PCI. But, now, Apple is killing PCI. It is not available on the new Mac Pros. A lot of guys don't like the new Mac Pros because they are not easily expandable. In the past, you could put everything in the big silver box. Now you have a black cylinder with a dozen external thingamabobs. But there are relatively few interfaces that work with Thunderbolt. The MOTU 828x at about 900 bucks seems to be the cheapest good one. But very few people have tried it so there are no reviews. Hard to tell how well it works with Mavericks.

So, to summarize, things are in disarray at the very high end. And they are equally in disarray in the middle. And it looks like the disarray will last for a while. Audio engineers love Apple, but Apple does not care about audio engineers.

[nosoyninja]

I have interfaces from Apogee, MOTU, Universal Audio, and a few other smaller ones in use at various rooms in my studio. For home and project studio recording, USB 2 should be fine for the foreseeable future. Unless you plan on recording more than 8 tracks at 192khz at the same time, while simultaneously outputing 8 tracks, you really see no real practical advantage to using thunderbolt interfaces.

USB is not going anywhere either. So if you buy a USB2 interface today, like the apogee quartet or something from RME (rocksolid drivers for both mac and pc), you'll most likely be able to keep it working for you for quite a few years. You'll probably need a new computer BEFORE you need a new interface anyway...

I regularly work with humungous audio-postproduction projects for film (upwards of 500 tracks) and they run just fine on a middle of the road iMac with a USB2 interface.

K

[jster]

I'm seriously looking at the German company RME. They seem to keep up with Apple in terms of OS and drivers and also seem to have plenty of positive reviews and very few if any negative reviews. And RME stuff only costs a half zillion as opposed to a zillion.

And yes, you are right about USB, at least if there is good DSP set up in the interface. Took me a while to figure out what that was all about!

[jzucker]

why does anyone here need that kind of horsepower? Are you guys really utilizing that many simultaneous inputs and outputs?

[jster]

I need mic, guitar, and midi keyboard. But the main thing is to have an interface that allows you to hear yourself singing and playing in the mix without latency and ideally with all the effects you would use. At least you want decent reverb and EQ. That's where DSP comes in. So Metrc Halo for example charges an extra 500 bucks (on top of the 2000+ for the box) so that you can have that kind of DSP monitoring of yourself. So its not so much horsepower. It is really key functionality (monitoring with effects and without latency). The more effects, the more money. And if you want to have fancy virtual MIDI instruments without latency, then it becomes more compicated and more expensive. I'm not sure all that is involved there. For interfaces: PRO=DSP.

[nosoyninja]

RME has an impeccable reputation with the audio-post crowd. A combination of Steinberg's Nuendo (for example) and an RME interface and you have a rig exactly as powerful as any Protools HD rig for a fraction of the cost.

If your looking for DSP powered plugins (for monitoring in realtime like you describe), the newest Universal Audio interface, the Apollo twin, is a great value. With reference quality converters and very low noise preamps. It's also thunderbolt only...

K

[jster]

What does "audio post" mean? I actually spent 5 days laying on the couch reading about this stuff, but I haven't figured out that term.

And while we're at it, maybe you could tell me what the difference is between a "front end" and a "back end"?

Why Steinberg Nuendo? I was thinking about learning Logic. I got the book coming in the mail.

That Apollo Twin looks nice! Darn. But now the price is creaping, creaping. I was thinking about the Babyface. It has MIDI too. I'm trying to figure out what the latency will be if I use MIDI along with the instruments in logic. I would connect a keyboard either through Babyface, or maybe just USB for the Apollo.

Everybody says that Logic has great instruments. So I'm trying to figure out how to have them available in Finale Songwriter and also how to have them available for a MIDI keyboard with very low latency. Not sure how that goes down. But that is pretty important also. Suppose I want to bang out some MIDI drums on a keyboard and hear it in the mix. ??

[nosoyninja]

Audio-post means audio post-production. That is, sound design, sound editing, effects, etc, for audiovisual media like movies or TV.

Nuendo is Steinbergs software for this purpose. It is a more robust and specialized version of Cubase with extra functions that only male sense for this niche market. Stuff like special ADR and voice over features.

Cubase is a more apropriate choice for music production and recording. But Logic is the only one that comes with such a vast library of music production elements and tools like synths and samples.

You should experience very little perceptible latency when using virtual instruments like you describe, even on the included system sound card. As a matter of fact, latency is not even an issue in that instance. Most music software has the ability to increase or decrease the audio processing buffer size so that sound samples and synths perform adecuately.

Also: front end in digital recording systems usually means anything in the signal chain BEFORE the signal turns digital. That is, usually, dynamics processors, EQ, mic preamps, and AD converters themselves.

K

[jster]

So, suppose you want to have a little jam. You have a mac, logic X, guitarist, vocalist, and a keyboardist who has a midi controller. So you send the guitarist and the vocalist through the Apollo. What do you do with the keyboardist? Do you use a USB midi controller to send him into the computer and then into the DAW to get the sounds and then out to the apollo to get into the mix? Or, and this I think the heart of my question, can the midi controller get the sounds, then bypass the DAW, and send them out to the apollo to get mixed? (I bought a couple of extra hard drives, one just for the virtual sounds.) When you mentioned the "included system sound card" that confuses me. Isn't the Apollo the sound card? It will be driving the studio monitors after all.

[GaryCorby]

It all sounds a bit contorted to me. I very much think you need to talk to a serious recording specialist. I'm no expert, but I suggest that:

A DAW is not a real-time effects system, isn't designed to be, and probably won't work very well if forced to be one. The DAW should be the last thing in line, to capture the signal.

You probably want every instrument to lead into a hardware-based mixing board with all the bells and whistles to send the sound out to monitors one way, and the same sound to the DAW on a separate line.

Any real-time effects you want need to be between the instruments and the mixing board. If that includes software-based stuff then they must be on a completely different computer to the DAW.

But I'm sure a recording pro would suggest something better.

[jster]

Interesting. I actually did buy two macs!

[jster]

I guess I just don't understand how MIDI sounds get into the DSP. The controller just sends out notes and velocities. Even with MIDI input on the interface, where would the sounds come from?

[jster]

Basically how do you connect MIDI instruments to your DSP for a nice mix with low latency?

[GaryCorby]

A keyboard, if it generates only MIDI, is called a MIDI Controller. That's a technical term in MIDI-speak. The next technical term you need is MIDI Instrument.

A MIDI Instrument accepts MIDI input from a Controller and maps it onto a sound. MIDI Instruments used to do this in many different ways, but these days they're pretty much all bits of software written as VST plugins.

Your mileage will vary wildly with MIDI Instruments. There are a zillion freely downloadable instruments. If you want your keyboard to sound like a clucking chicken then go for it. Unfortunately all but a handful of the freebies are terrible, IMHO. On the other hand there are some outstanding efforts in the paid-for range. At least one symphony orchestra has captured their instruments. If you google something like "vst instrument jazz" you'll be on the way.

[jster]

The Logic instruments are supposedly amazing. And so the question is how to get them into the DSP with very low latency so that they can be monitored in real time.