XXHighEnd

Sadly, I can now confirm that even the Firewire conenction can make a huge difference ...
I mean "sadly", because before I thought this was a consistent thing for playback quality. It now appears that it just is not.

Sidenote : no matter what, I can measure bitperfect playback in either case, so it can be about jitter only (or some high grade phenomenon and the lack of intelligence to recognize it).

So here goes :

The first time I noticed "a" difference, was when my Firewire PCI interface (of 10 years old btw) seemed at its end of life, because more and more I had to switch the cable from the one to the other connection on it, in order to let my Fireface recognize the proper connection. Note that I'm on a 10m Firewire cable here (the Firewire is externally powered), and for that matter things will be at the critical level anyway. So :

So at one time I couldn't either connection going anymore (while before the "rest" of a connection helped :dntknw:), I moved the PCI 6 months old Firewire interface card from my Vista machine (which machine was temporarily out of order anyway).
The most strange things happened with this : some -which I call "Crazy" again- channel separation seemed to appear suddenly. Huh ?
 :grazy:

This was so much occurring (wrong, *happening*) that from now on I could listen to rather perfect "stereo" information at listening at the couch right in front of one of the Orphean horns (at watching movies with the family), and therewith some 60 degrees out of line with the other one. Mind you, at this angle there is no way to see even a part of the throad, while looking right into the one of the first mentioned.

Another sidenote : you most probably recall a.o. my words all over the place about such and so good playback whatever. Wrong ...
Wrong again (how many times is this supposed to happen in the future ? :heat:)

Where this was the first occasion, here came the second :
My Vista PC was out of order, because it was awaitening a new motherboard. Of course I got one with on board Firewire. Convenient.
Well, got it up and running, and although Vista sounds different than XP anyways, it did not sound good anywmore at all. Not this day, not the other day, no day.
Note that I'm always listening to one situation for many days, in order to be sure it's not the mood, the booze, or whatever may influence which shouldn't.
But then I gave up on it.

Now, on this mobo are two Firewire connections : one directly connected to the mobo at the back, and one somewhere in the middle of the board, leading to the back with a cable.
Problem gone !
So that was the third indication.

Btw, the Vista machine is close to the equipment, and uses a 1m or so Firewire cable.

As always at expecting things which may differ or seem to be different, I told this to Bert. Well, that's a difficult one, because now we are in the area of subjective matters, and no way of measuring, knowing the logic or what else to check it remotely.

But as I just heard from Bert, he can, say, copy my behaviour.

Well Bert, what's your advise on this ?
Currently I can't do better than : checkout a few situations, and at least buy a (cheap ?) PCI card. The differences are enormeous, but they are hard to qualify. Channel separation would be one of them, a bit depending on Bert's findings. The other seems to be tiny sound. Less full.

Apart from the fact that I can't explain these huge differences, I think it is a sad thing that it is so by itself.
Otoh I achieved an improvement once more.

I have had the same issue's with either my usb or firewire connections. In my main pc I have tried several firewire pci cards of wich the ones with VIA chipsets where the worst sounding, best was (is) the one with Texas Instruments chipset but these seem hard to find these days. For years the TI chipsets where about the standard in firewire interfaces but nowadays many cards are very cheaply produced and they almost all use VIA chipsets. Another good one was the one with Ageere chipset, about as good as the TI. Any good local dealer can tell you what chipset the cards are using, if they can't just go to another store with more qualified salesmen.

With USB I have only experienced a huge diference between my laptop usb and my desktop usb. The desktop sounds much better, in fact the laptop sound quite horrible via usb despite being it a far more modern computer than the desktop is. I really don't know why this is. Maybe it a more stable power supply, maybe only the usb chipset, maybe because my desktop desn't do any speedstepping, has no dualcore etc etc, could be anything. Anyways, I'm looking for a replacement for my desktop since it's a bit at the end of it's life but I have no lue what to buy anymore, sound quality wise that is

Peter,
Both connections were firewire 800?

No. 400 in all cases.

Uhm... and why did you get the FF 800 instead of the much cheaper FF400? Did you try both?
I thought one of the benefits of the ff800 was the wider bus.

I have this doubt, on my temporary music pc I have 2 onboard firewire 400 ports. I could get a pci (pci-x actually) Granite firewire 800 controller with TI chipset (i checked).

TBH I think I'll go with the FF400, and maybe use a master clock like the Big Ben.
*confused*

When I bought the FF800 back in 2005, the FF400 didn't exist. :prankster:
But I think I still would go for the FF800 because of its versitility. It's just a very nice toy for connecting everything you'd ever want. A bit pricey though for using it as an SPDIF passthrough only ... :o


Careful then, because PCI-X is a double-long slot rarely seen on mobo's (in fact it's kind of old-fasioned).

My old xeon computer has pci-x slots, which require pin compatibility to use pci-32 boards.
But I think i'll go with the onboard firewire 400 and the FF400. In the worst case I need to upgrade the soundcard of this pc, because I use it mainly for music when I'm in the studio.

I think I have realized the main cause of difference in SQ between the FF400 and the FF800: the first is bus-powered and the latter is not.

If you mean it gets its power from the computer, mine doesn't. I use a Firewire connection and the FF400 plugs in the mains with its own transformer. :good:

Chris, there is a switch at the back of the FireFace400 where you can select where the power has to come from but USB bus power doesn't work on a laptop...

Bert

Aaah, I was assuming since on their website they say "bus powered" it was ONLY bus powered.

I have to wait and find a good deal on it, I do not feel playing full price ;)

Heya Peter,

Are you still using 1 meter of FW cable to the Fireface800?

I just ordered 1m of 9pin to 9 pin from this nice looking cable
http://www.unibrain.com/products/p1394/cables_b.htm
Have you ever seen if there is a difference between the 400 connection or the 800?  Out of curiosity, which are you using?

Yes, still using the (el cheapo) 1m. 400. Never tried the 800.