Audio interface : Firewire pcie ( chipset ) vs usb port ( cpu ). Which will give lower latency ?

[Voyager]

Hi everyone !

I'm going to build a new pc on amd platform and i came across a dilemma i can't really figure out.

On my current pc, as audio interface i'm still using a loyal audiofire interface connected to a firewire pcie card which to my surprise worked just out of the box and with no issue under W10. For the sake of silence my pc is outside the room and i'm using a 23ft ( 7m ) firewire cable.

For the coming build cpu wise i'm going with a 5700X and after some back and forth between the B550 and X570S chipset i'm going to go with a B550 motherboard but if you have a different opinion and think an X570 chipset may be better for daw use i would like to know your opinion.

Now i noticed that the motherboard i'm laying my eyes on have 2x usb 3.2 ports, 1x type-c and 1x type-a and from my understanding and correct me if i'm wrong, both are linked directly to the cpu. Those are part of the 4x superspeed 10gbps usb port as shown in the diagram below.



Now my theory tells me that if i keep the audiofire interface with the firewire pcie card the streaming data from the daw will be, cpu > chipset > firewire pcie card > audio interface. In the other and if using the 3.2 ports linked to the cpu the data will go directly through the audio interface. Of course i leaved the ram out of the equation, you get point.

Now if what i said stand correct and from a latency perspective, shouldn't the usb port linked directly to the cpu be a huge improvment over the firewire option ? At first look to me it seems quite clear but i fear that i'm certainly missing something that will contradict this theory...

I'm not super tech-savvy ence the reason i come to you asking for thoughs on this subject

Thanks for reading

[moalla]

At all 7m of cable sounds crazy. So for example of my experience with my RME usb interfaces and a Audient ID14 connected to a b550 mainboard i can tell you. After AMD released the first working bios update in 2021 usb worked stable the first time at b550 boards, the Ryzen 5000 bios get also stable first after 1,5yewars after release, but now teverything is fine. At all latew 2020 i had to decide if i wanna build a powerfull 5 times faster machine than my antic T440p notebook, i had to build it with a decent GPU....
I made my own mini ITX case from collected aluminum bars of it´s bagpack mobility size etc.
Now the problem at all with my R3900x build with only a single 120mm AIO water cooler it could crash the system, when the fan rpm is set to low at high cpu load, otherweise if i set ithe fan speed offer 65% it gets really loud! My MSI gt1030 gpu are passive and i had never problems with it or coil beeping. So in terms of noise buy a oversized AIO or extreme big normal cooler when case size isn´t a question for you and set the fan speed between 30% -55%so you won´t recognise anything of your machine next to you, only if you set your ears directly to the pc case.

USB 2.0 speed is still a good thing with cables under 1,5n lenght, the latency of the whole system is at first influenced by case latency ram speed, for music computimg i would say min cl16 3600mhz dual rank are recommend in 2023. I´ll using cl17 3600 dual patriot ram, but as well a R3600x system with cl16 3200mhz dual rank ram are okay, but the overalll latency is a little bit higher. From other fireface users i have read, that they had often problem with USB3.0 and up to get their interfaces well working, with usb2 no one had problems. If you own a nice firewire interface you could give it with a pci-e firewire card a try, never used firewire by myself.

Their is no advantage to spend more money for a X570 board my and most other daw users opinion, most important thing the right ram to have to so called sweetspot of the cpu! So in 2023 i won´t buy a cpu without graphics inside for my workstation, if high loading scenarios are not the thing of your usage a Ryzen 5700g for around 200bucks are really really nice part of hardware! But i know it hardly 10years ago it was a big thing of lowest latencys and bus widness, usb vs. firewire. So i decided to buy expensive 1k rme interface of it´s future stability, now i´ve found a used rme babyface for 200bucks and I´m really happy with this combination of fastest drivers, stability and adat in and out between ipad and pc.

Maybee this thread could be usefull, when your looking for a cheap good workiong pci-e firewire card and some dicsussion about firewire latency.
https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=23876&p=3

[Voyager]

Never really had any problem with the 23ft ( 7M ) firewire cable lenght. For a firewire cable this length is still very acceptable i guess. Like i said in my initial post my audio interface is already in pair with a firewire pcie card. My question is if using a shorter circuitry path and bypassing controllers will it improve the latency or not.

[moalla]

At all it has nothing to do with a shorter circuity, it´s a thing of the bus connection at all and ram speed latency, because the usb controller is connected same by the pci x lanes as the firewirecard chip! So Maybee take a look at the rme forum it´s really helpfull.

[Voyager]

At all it has nothing to do with a shorter circuity, it´s a thing of the bus connection at all and ram speed latency, maybee take a look at the rme forum it´s really helpfull.

I'll check. More importantly there is the additional controllers. The chipset and the firewire pcie card are in between the cpu and audio interface. The signal has to go through those controllers before reaching the audio interface.

[moalla]

So at all about usb connection and shitty drivers, i can say: A decent developer like RME wrote their own protocol for USB, so it uses a totaly different technique what iss working more like the firewire protocoll as loseless stream, but most junkinterfaces are using block datatransfer what is a big bottleneck. Most new Inmusic junkinterfaces for example are programmed by a team who are hired of the majority by most of new junkinterface companys, good or bad? Time will show.

[Voyager]

Yes i've read numerous times that RME have excellent latency and most stable drivers but you got to put money on the table. But this is another topic and it doesn't resolve the calculus we got here.

Because let say even with an RME interface and use of a generic usb port controlled by the chipset, why not use the usb direct lane to the cpu and bypass the chipset instead ? My guess is the more the data have to pass through various controllers the more latency it should add. Now if this theory hold to be true what's the scope and scale of this latency may be i don't know.. Just some amateur thinking right here.

[moalla]

My advice for the best buy in 2023, get a Rme Digiface USB 400-500€ (but now there was a pricedrop for it around 150€ the last months sadly) firstly a ADA8200 by behringer or if you have the money a Audient ASP800/880 depends if you need outputs on the adat preamp side , two-four 10m adat cables for 20bucks and you will be happy the next ten years+ Togehter with 'Ryzen 5700g b550mianboard, 16gb ddr3600 cl16 dual rank ram, 1tb nvme ssd you will get around 1k a professional entry workstation, for 300more you will have a 16core cpu and 32gb ram pc, at all of the costs of a one gpu or better macbook air .
Att all the Ryyzen 5000 will be a huge performnce drop, that you will nno problems with data amount and latency, if the drivers are solid like RME, Audient, Motu. The cheapest semiprofessional would be to get a Audient ID14mk2with adat in + ADA 8200, if you want to have adat out in ue with the converter, a ID22 bucks more at the big T shop at sale now, used it costs quiet the same.

[jam-s]

At all it has nothing to do with a shorter circuity, it´s a thing of the bus connection at all and ram speed latency, maybee take a look at the rme forum it´s really helpfull.

I'll check. More importantly there is the additional controllers. The chipset and the firewire pcie card are in between the cpu and audio interface. The signal has to go through those controllers before reaching the audio interface.

As PCIe allows for DMA transfers the additional controllers can be bypassed if the driver makes use of it. So it can be very fast and low latency as well. I'd simply give it a try and see if there's an actual problem.

[EdGrip]

Is this maybe overcomplicating things?
There are lists comparing the latencies of every interface on the market. If latency is the value under scrutiny, it might be best just to look at one of those lists, and see which connection correlates most with the lower latencies.

But from what I remember last time I was reading around this, there's not really a gap between USB and FireWire for audio purposes these days. I may be wrong but FireWire increasingly feels like a connection that could be obsolete any minute now.

[Voyager]

As PCIe allows for DMA transfers the additional controllers can be bypassed if the driver makes use of it. So it can be very fast and low latency as well. I'd simply give it a try and see if there's an actual problem.

Pcie x1 communicate directly through the chipset, how can it be bypassed ? There is no lane between the pcie x1 and the cpu, only for the pcie x16.

Is this maybe overcomplicating things?
There are lists comparing the latencies of every interface on the market. If latency is the value under scrutiny, it might be best just to look at one of those lists, and see which connection correlates most with the lower latencies.

But from what I remember last time I was reading around this, there's not really a gap between USB and FireWire for audio purposes these days. I may be wrong but FireWire increasingly feels like a connection that could be obsolete any minute now.

Not really, a direct lane between usb port and the cpu is quite recent and interesting to see if we can take advantage of it.

Firewire isn't supported since quite some time now.

Btw where is that list ?

[EdGrip]

https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index ... d.2215212/

Last updated 2021 - there might be a newer one somewhere.

[jam-s]

As PCIe allows for DMA transfers the additional controllers can be bypassed if the driver makes use of it. So it can be very fast and low latency as well. I'd simply give it a try and see if there's an actual problem.

Pcie x1 communicate directly through the chipset, how can it be bypassed ? There is no lane between the pcie x1 and the cpu, only for the pcie x16.

With DMA the firewire peripheral (=audio interface) can directly write it's sample buffer into the RAM and also read from there while the CPU is doing other tasks (like rendering the next batch) so the latency can be really low as memory access from the CPU is also very fast.

[Voyager]

With DMA the firewire peripheral (=audio interface) can directly write it's sample buffer into the RAM and also read from there while the CPU is doing other tasks (like rendering the next batch) so the latency can be really low as memory access from the CPU is also very fast.

Is this DMA feature standard on all firewire audio interfaces ? If not how can i know if my interface have DMA ?

[jam-s]

DMA is standard tech for the PCI bus and most PCI cards should be able to use it. Of course it depends on the driver. Asking the manufacturer of the interface for details could give you the answer. In general I'd expect pro audio interface manufacturers to use DMA via firewire for low latency.

[Voyager]

DMA is standard tech for the PCI bus and most PCI cards should be able to use it. Of course it depends on the driver. Asking the manufacturer of the interface for details could give you the answer. In general I'd expect pro audio interface manufacturers to use DMA via firewire for low latency.

I'm pretty sure there is not such thing with my Audiofire interface, even did a quick search and found no mention anywhere.

Do you have any though about the usb - cpu lane ?

[jam-s]

I think it's unlikely for an USB audio interface to take real advantage of the USB CPU lanes as most of those are still USB2 internally and don't really have a means to use the additional bandwidth USB3 has to offer.
Also those direct lanes are most likely to be used for M.2 mass storage slots on the main board to have faster data transfer from SSDs or highspeed eth NICs). Maybe you can find out if this is the case for your chosen mainboard model as well.

[Voyager]

I think it's unlikely for an USB audio interface to take real advantage of the USB CPU lanes as most of those are still USB2 internally and don't really have a means to use the additional bandwidth USB3 has to offer.

I get your point but I was not refering to the usb3 bandwidth capability because it serves almost no purpose for audio and the backward compatibility as most audio interface are 2.0 anyway. Like i said what intriguing me most is the direct path between the cpu and the audio interface and avoiding any potential in between "latency" controllers.

[miyaru]

I would opt for a new audio interface, and a silent pc, so you do not need any long cables anymore, and go to win11 right away. Firewire is obsolete anyway, why invest time and effort in it?

Depending on your needs start with a Babyface, and maybe later add an ADAT interface later. And why AMD, personal I would choose Intel, maybe not the fastest on all points, but surely the most stable.......

[Voyager]

I would opt for a new audio interface, and a silent pc, so you do not need any long cables anymore, and go to win11 right away. Firewire is obsolete anyway, why invest time and effort in it?

Depending on your needs start with a Babyface, and maybe later add an ADAT interface later. And why AMD, personal I would choose Intel, maybe not the fastest on all points, but surely the most stable.......

Another reason that i didn't mention on why i keep my pc outside the room is that my room is facing south and the sun hit all day plus it's heavely acousticaly treated so it become very very hot in summer.

I'll keep the firewire for now and see how it goes latency wise, if not satisfied i will try another interface with the usb to cpu lane.

Why do you suggest going W11 right away ?

As for AMD why not ? i already picked the B550 motherboard..a bit too late i guess.

[miyaru]

I would opt for a new audio interface, and a silent pc, so you do not need any long cables anymore, and go to win11 right away. Firewire is obsolete anyway, why invest time and effort in it?

Depending on your needs start with a Babyface, and maybe later add an ADAT interface later. And why AMD, personal I would choose Intel, maybe not the fastest on all points, but surely the most stable.......

Another reason that i didn't mention on why i keep my pc outside the room is that my room is facing south and the sun hit all day plus it's heavely acousticaly treated so it become very very hot in summer.

I'll keep the firewire for now and see how it goes latency wise, if not satisfied i will try another interface with the usb to cpu lane.

Why do you suggest going W11 right away ?

As for AMD why not ? i already picked the B550 motherboard..a bit too late i guess.

We go there anyway, if you do an install and tune up do it now….. That is what I would and will do when buying a new PC. As for AMD: I have had one music PC in the past equipped with AMD, the rest of my computing life, I used Intel to my great satisfaction. They seem to offer better compatibility…….

[Voyager]

I would prefer W11 to mature first. I don't know much about it yet but i would be surprised if it is trouble free out of the box. As for the cpu always been intel but since Ryzen 5000 chipset received lot of praise i decided why not for once jump in team red..

[miyaru]

I wish I could run win11 on my music PC, but my old i7-7700 Intel is not certified for the job…. Not legal anyway.

For myself I would like to use an i9 13 th gen with 16 cores for my upcoming pc in a year or two.

Maybe I’m crazy with my Intel love affair, who knows…..

[Voyager]

Noticed same thing happening with motherboards not being certified W11.. marketing bs.. You can't live or own things the way you want anymore, the system is dictating what you'll own and not. Guess that's why originality is long gone

If W11 uses more cpu ressources than W10 i see no need to upg.. downgrade. I don't need all those stupid apps spying you or tryi emptying your wallet..

[reasonosaer]

round trip latency has more to do with the quality of the drivers than the interface format at this point. some companies have the resources to write stable proprietary low latency drivers for windows and mac, most don't and will resort to class compliant drivers which are good enough for most applications for most people but not as low latency as good proprietary drivers for any of the common formats such as usb, pcie, thunderbolt, or ethernet based formats. RME largely earned their current market share by consistently offering such drivers for their products and you will notice they were still releasing new products based on the usb 2.0 standard as recently as a year or two ago. Meanwhile Antelope have hurt their master clock business and had their interface products largely relegated to the consumer market for years now based in part on having the opposite reputation.

If class compliant drivers work for your use case (unless you're a pro caliber vocalist or instrumentalist who wants to regularly monitor yourself through a chain of native plugins they're probably fine) and you don't need a ton of i/o a british company that mostly makes multitrack recorders for location and film sound called JoeCo released a desktop usb interface called Cello a few years ago that didn't get a lot of traction in the market but was an excellent value at the original retail price and can be found much cheaper now. the budget clearly didn't stretch to a ux design team for JoeCo but they have a bunch of features and a level of component and build quality you won't find on any other sub $2k prosumer type interfaces that i'm aware of.