A FireWire® audio interface connects a computer to a professional audio device using the FireWire® connection protocol, which offers faster speeds than USB. It remains popular due to its efficiency and ability to better allocate bandwidth between connected devices.
A FireWire® audio interface is a means of connecting a computer to a professional audio device. It uses the FireWire® connection protocol, which originally offered faster speeds than Universal Serial Bus (USB) connections. With nominal speeds of 400 or 800 megabits per second and a more efficient design than USB, the FireWire® audio interface remains popular, even as USB 3.0 begins to gain popularity in the latter days of 2011.
Also known as iLink or by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) technical name, IEEE-1394, FireWire® is commonly used for high-speed connections between devices. It has a six-wire cord with a rectangular plug with a triangular extrusion on one end. In its usual style, it carries 400 megabits per second of data, while the newer FireWire® 800 standard can carry double that amount.
Audio devices were originally developed to use the FireWire® audio interface due to the slow transfer speed of USB 1.0. At the time, Macintosh® computers, which were popular in studio environments, only supported FireWire®. As a result, digital audio devices use the FireWire® audio interface to take the data they’ve recorded and put it on the computer’s hard drive.
Modern professional audio, whether in the studio or in a live setting, is primarily a digital affair. As the microphones continue to capture sound signals, the signal is rapidly converted into a digital format. Once the recording data has been digitized, it is in a format that can be transmitted over FireWire®. The digital signals are then sent through digital mixing and filtering equipment and then to a hard drive on a computer, for storage and further manipulation, or to a digital-to-analog converter which converts the signals into analog form for amplification .
As USB has been upgraded to the 2.0 megabits per second USB 480 standard and the even faster USB 3.0 standard, which can carry up to 4.8 gigabits per second, professional audio devices have also begun to integrate USB connections. Despite the improvements in USB, FireWire® has a strong installed base of legacy devices. It also has the ability to better allocate its bandwidth between connected devices, preventing connections from running too slowly. Additionally, FireWire® supports the long cable runs common in professional audio setups.
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