Firewire soundcards & USB laptops

[sandall]

I've been asked to connect an old Firewire soundcard (Echo AudioFire-12) to a laptop that only has USB sockets, to make up a travelling kit. There are lots of USB-Firewire leads out there, but apparently they only work with Sony cameras. I've suggested buying a refurb'd laptop like a Dell D630, which has both a Firewire socket & an ExpreeCard slot, but does anyone have better ideas?

[Malcolm Gordon]

FireWire audio compatibility is a bit of a black art. Apart from the actual socket, a pre-requisite is usually a Texas Instruments chipset, but even then it may not work reliably with particular soundcards. This article explains the problem.

[James]

I'm sure it's an absolutely obvious question but is there any reason why it has to be that particular firewire soundcard as opposed to something a little more up to date? 

(I have a few old m-audio firewire cards and have kept some older firewire enabled laptops to work with them but they haven't been used for many a year now and I'm struggling to remember quite why I'm still holding onto them) 

James. 

[Robin D]

I had similar problems trying to connect a camcorder that only had FireWire output for capture. Needed to copy some old tapes. Fortunately my 15 year-old tower still alternatively boots into Windows 7 and has on-board 1394 chipset. Everything else I tried as a convertor did not work. Running the tower with Red Hat Linux did not work either.

[J Pearce]

Even if you get it to connect you’ll probably end up in driver hell.

There are some very affordable USB sound interfaces available, get something up to date.

[Brian]

11 hours ago, sandall said:

I've been asked to connect an old Firewire soundcard...

17 years old to be exact.

[Malcolm Gordon]

For a number of years I have been successfully using a M-Audio FW 410 with my WS7 Sony Vaio. However, the 4-pin FireWire socket has become unreliable, so that an inadvertent nudge of the cable can cause a loud bang, a loss of connection and the need to power down and reboot at both ends, since hot-plugging, although theoretically permissible under the standard, is not recommended to avoid circuit damage.

I managed to find a Roland UA-101, predecessor of the Octa Capture, with a USB 2.0 connection, and have migrated to that. 

[sandall]

A bit of background; the amateur theatre I'm still involved with has replaced its 12-channel Echo AudioFire cards with Focusrite Scarlett 18i20s (with an extension card for the main house) -  total overkill for our needs, but hey, that's progress, & Echo got out of audio a while back, so there's no support for the AudioFires. Someone is taking a show to Brum next week & wants to take one of the Scarletts out of a rack, which seems a really, ready bad idea, so the suggestion was to make up a travelling kit with a laptop, one of the AudioFires & (as we've found that modern laptops don't seem to come with 1394 ports) a USB - 1394 cable. Unfortunately, like many electronic items on the well-known shopping sites, they don't work, so it looks like the options are buying or hiring another Scarlett, or buying a cheap refurbed Dell to use with one of (beautifully simple) AudioFires.

 

[jamesperrett]

I wouldn't use the built-in Firewire on an old Dell laptop for audio. The one's I've used don't have a TI firewire chip and, while they may recognise the interface, you are unlikely to be able to transfer any audio without strange noises. Older Lenovo laptops are likely to be more successful as they tended to use TI Firewire chips. I also have an old Acer laptop with a TI chip which works well with Firewire interfaces.

[sandall]

12 hours ago, jamesperrett said:

I wouldn't use the built-in Firewire on an old Dell laptop for audio. The one's I've used don't have a TI firewire chip and, while they may recognise the interface, you are unlikely to be able to transfer any audio without strange noises. Older Lenovo laptops are likely to be more successful as they tended to use TI Firewire chips. I also have an old Acer laptop with a TI chip which works well with Firewire interfaces.

Interesting; something I hadn't considered. My only direct experience with using Firewire was years ago, editing from DV with Premiere on a Dell Latitude C840.  Just out of curiosity I may have to borrow one of the AudioFire cards to see if my D630 will talk to it. The original problem has now gone away, as they are going to buy another Scarlett to keep as an emergency spare, but thanks for all the suggestions

[richardash1981]

For the benefit of anyone reading this in future, a working general purpose USB to Firewire converter doesn't exist (either way, and any price). The cables which exist for video look on the USB side like a USB video camera which is in turn capturing the DV picture coming over the firewire link.

For the "why" it comes down to the way both Firewire and especially USB are designed, with a Host Controller which interprets between the PC and the peripherals plugged in to the port. The standard allows for exactly one host controller, possibly some hubs, and then the peripheral devices. This keeps things simple for designers, but limits flexibility. In particular, you can't put a firewire host controller in a USB device and have the computer see it like a firewire host because there is no way in the standard for USB device to describe itself as being a host controller. The video cables work by claiming to the computer (USB host) to be the video capture device, and then hoping the device has enough built-in intelligence to act as host controller for the firewire device (which usually means limited compatibility).

It's worth noting that you can have a Thunderbolt to Firewire converter, because Thunderbolt is a much more complicated bus protocol, and effectively passes PCI Express data through (amongst other things), which is how external graphics cards connected over Thunderbolt work. PCI Express is a much more complex bus which allows for multiple layers of host controller to be included in the connectivity (which makes is harder to implement, which is why Thunderbolt peripherals tend to be higher priced). However the internet seems to show that getting Thunderbolt to Firewire adaptors to work under Windows is very problematic (too many different proprietary software vendors involved).

[jamesperrett]

11 hours ago, sandall said:

Interesting; something I hadn't considered. My only direct experience with using Firewire was years ago, editing from DV with Premiere on a Dell Latitude C840.  Just out of curiosity I may have to borrow one of the AudioFire cards to see if my D630 will talk to it. The original problem has now gone away, as they are going to buy another Scarlett to keep as an emergency spare, but thanks for all the suggestions

Good to hear they've taken a sensible route to a solution. According to the page at

https://restore.solutions/dv/laptop/dell/latituded630/

the D630 uses the O2 Micro chipset for Firewire which is one of the ones I tried without success. It would be fine for video work or for mass storage but not for audio.

 

[sandall]

12 hours ago, jamesperrett said:

the D630 uses the O2 Micro chipset for Firewire which is one of the ones I tried without success

Ok, thanks James. Probably time to abandon the idea, though I might persevere enough to see what a PCMIA adapter makes of audio (if anything). That's a useful site; I looked up my old C840 for interest, but the mini-spec doesn't mention Firewire or USB ports.

 

[Anothertom]

I'd probably have suggested finding a 2011 macbook pro, upgrading the HDD to an SSD, and using that. Reported compatibility up to mac OS 10.11. But going with a more modern product is probably better in the long run, and you now have a spare focusrite.

[sandall]

Unfortunately the AudioFires (which were unbeatable if you didn't want all the bells & whistles that modern soundcards come with) came as a package with SFX, which AFAIK is still Windows-only &, as Timeline still seem to be giving it away, probably not long for this world. Still, as you suggest - problem sorted.

Edited July 17, 2022 by sandall