Firewire VS USB VS Direct In (soundcard)

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Hey all,

What kind of soundcard are you all using? Perhaps the one that came with your mac?

I recently upgraded to the AudioFire 2 from Echo. Its a neat little box that connects to the firewire 400 port on the mac of my iMac.

It sounds quite good but I cant help thinking that there was a better sound quality from the creative soundblaster cards that I used in my old pc and laptop. These cards plugged straight into the motherboard (PCI), or 'Direct In' as I call them :Smirk:

Could the fact that I'm now using firewire have any affect on sound quality?

Would USB perhaps then be worse?

Tell me what ya think peeps, and thanks for reading :)
 
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There's external soundcards from Creative as well. Obviously, the internal soundcard's would be the best, but since you can't do that on an iMac, external it is. It also depends on the quality of the external soundcard. I don't know about this Echo soundcard, it may be good or may be crap. I don't think the USB/Firewire matters too much in this case, but it won't sound any better via USB.

However, the iMac does have an optical out port, so if you have a Dolby digital/DTS receiver, it can transmit that without any signal loss.
 
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Depending on what you are doing with the card. The echo's are pretty good cards, and I know a lot of laptop DJ's that use them. There would be no difference really between USB and Firewire, although most of the DJ's I know swear by firewire.

To answer your other question I currently use a MOTU Ultralite.
 
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However, the iMac does have an optical out port, so if you have a Dolby digital/DTS receiver, it can transmit that without any signal loss.

Where would this be?
 
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^^ Dudes, your avatars are confusing!

As for the optical port, it is the same headphones out port. Some kind of dual port thing. Just plug in an optical cable and it will slip right through.
 
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cool...thanks.
 

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