I'm looking into firewire devices for audio in/out. I'm surprised there are so many, I had no idea! Here's a list:
http://www.audiomidi.com/master.cfm?CID=326At the moment, the Presonus Firebox is looking like a good contender. It's not expensive, but has enough I/O to enable stereo recording (of music performance!), room and loudspeaker measurement, room and loudspeaker correction, and even a three-way crossover. Which covers pretty much most everything I would want a computer to do for audio... Also, it gets good reviews both for stability and sound quality.
http://www.presonus.com/firebox.htmlWhat I don't know is whether you really can run all those I/Os at the same time, and how much processing you can do on the signal, and the latency through the computer (Mac, in my case). But that's pretty much the case with all of these interfaces, they are designed for recording not so much for realtime processing.
Other devices I've looked at a little. Also in the "under $500" bracket, the M-Audio Firewire 410 looks good for the $ but gets panned on the drivers. Higher priced units generally have more I/O and are probably more rugged; in the list above, MOTU and Metric Halo seem to be well regarded.
Anyway, that's about all I know right now
Does anyone here have experience with firewire audio?
