future of firewire?

Ok. Might you not have read it in between the lines in the DAC topic, here is my kind of special angle :

With the Phasure NOS1 I had in mind to provide it with an internal Firewire connection. Not especially because I wanted Firewire as such, but because from there I could use I2S as the better connection than SPDIF. Note that this is a 24/192 DAC, so I couldn't use USB (which is limited to 16/96).
Btw, I came up with the idea now several months ago, right in the "Buffalo" thread (at DIYA); you might have noticed it.

All these several months I have spent as much time on it as response times from suppliers/manufacturers allowed, and it was only last weekend I gave up on it definitly, since I found another I2S route. So :

First of all I found two manufacturers only, providing a Firewire chip. There may be more, but Google doesn't know them then.
Along with that, I found two suppliers; 1 per manufacturer.

Story from supplier 1 :
Yes we have a development board. Yes it is especially made for users for small amounts. Yes you can buy it. 370 euros.
And I did. I came full of dust, and at talking with the supplier over the phone lateron, indeed it had been laying there for 3 years.
It came with no drivers, which after a few rounds of emails came afterall, but did not work. After again a few emails I learned that the board was end of life. Then I grabbed the phone, which brought the news that a newer chip was available, but no development board was planned for it. Oh, there was at 1200 euro, but it didn't suit any of my needs. And keep in mind : a development board is for developing a PCB and all, which of course is stupid in my case. Even for 100 DACs it would be.
After the promise for a working driver, it took two other weeks before I received it (this was after 5 weeks of total throughput time), and the only thing that driver could do was crash software that normally produces sound. The use of it wasn't there anywhere, because I can't get more boards if needed.
The supplier offered to return it (but I still have it).

Story from suppplier :
Thank you for calling. Yes we can do that, but we changed our product names, and now this is such and so. Have to rush now. Tomorrow I will answer your questions.
No answers anymore.
In the mean time I found more about there products, and could ask better questions. One was : hey, with your old product names 192KHz was available, not anymore now ?
After this new email with questions there was a first answer : no, we must change the drivers first. Ah, oh, so I am the first one needing 192KHz, right ? Well, I sure won't pay for this, and let everybody use it. -> yea, well, no, channels, bandwidth blahblah. But I have to leave now for a week, and will give you a quotation after that.
No quotation seen.
Last week I asked politely what happened, but I guess the poor man will be at CES forever, or whatever it is that does't make him sell anything.
Never heard anything back, and this lasted from December 12. Mind you, this company had a perfect small board ready for use by anyone with some soldering capacities. But my guess is that it was air only.

Right. It looks like something is very wrong in Firewire land. Suppliers from real life boards cannot deliver. Further suppliers are just not known. The phone conversations with Supplier1 told me that. There *are* more suppliers, but they deliver for Weiss et all, and the only thing which could be done is that Supplier1 would buy back from guys like Weiss. Or I had to do it myself.
Hey there Daniel, I'm building a DAC myself, and since you're the only one with a kind of consumer DAC carrying Firewire, I suppose I can get a few Firewire interfaces from you ?
Yeah, right.

It looks like this market is dominated by some long known manufacturers, and there is just no openness to new ones. I never suggested I wanted to build a single DAC for myself, and merely asked for 100+ quotations. Nothing leads me to actual manufacturers for help, except for Google. And of course that doesn't help much, because 1 million comes first then.

At least now we know why no consumer DACs with Firewire exist (and personally I don't call any Weiss product a consumer product -> all Pro). It just can't be done at lower volumes.

Because all is so closed, it is my guess that the Firewire companies know by a long time that Firewire times are over. There is a huge existing Pro market, but no real new products emerge there (Weiss possibly being one of the latest). Not at the real levels of 24/192 (96 is another matter).
Chips are sufficiently available, and reproduced when necessary;
When new markets emerge like PC audio needing Firewire (careful here, and I might have been the very first exploring the Fireface800 for such a reason back in 2005), this is too late. There is no anticipation on these kind of initiatives.
Isn't it stupid : PC's are full of Firewire TRANSMITTERS, but no boards exists to be a RECEIVER. Yea, that one Supplier2 board guy, who doesn't want to sell.

Ok, this was just a real life story.
Peter

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