Any firewire experts here?

[kristianjohnsen]

What kind of things can one utilize firewire for? I'm a firewire dummy and understand it is mainly used to get video or multitrack audio into a computer.

I have however seen some interesting-looking firewire interfaces with all kinds of connections.

Is there a way to use two firewire interfaces + a firewire-cat5 extention system to make a digital snake?

Will it even work?

Stability?

Latency?

 

[Kip Conner]

Re: Any firewire experts here?

Maybe you can tell us a little about what you are trying to accomplish and what interfaces you have and we can come up with a solution for you.

Firewire is typically used for hooking a device (DAW, Harddrives, Multi-channel Pre-amp) to a computer, so if you are trying to take two firewire devices and place them in a remote location, say on a stage, and then some how digitally transfer the signal to your console/mix position it's going be a little difficult and not cost worthy. Most consoles that have firewire on them are used for the audio to exit the board to a computer and not input audio to the board.

 

[kristianjohnsen]

Re: Any firewire experts here?

Maybe you can tell us a little about what you are trying to accomplish

I am investigating the different possibilities for transferring multiple audio lines from one location to the next without using traditional cabling and am wondering whether a cat5 cable with a firewire extendor and interface either end is plausible. The interfaces would have to have the correct connections to mate up with whatever needs to be connected on the gig in question: This could be mic preamps or line level ADs or adat interfaces for digital mixer I/O or analog I/O for analog mixers.

Maybe you can tell us a little about what you are trying to accomplish and what interfaces you have and we can come up with a solution for you.

I have no firewire interfaces.

if you are trying to take two firewire devices and place them in a remote location, say on a stage, and then some how digitally transfer the signal to your console/mix position it's going be a little difficult and not cost worthy.

From a technical standpoint, why will this not work?

Most consoles that have firewire on them are used for the audio to exit the board to a computer and not input audio to the board.

I was thinking more along the lines of two stand-alone interfaces talking to eachother and just transferring whatever comes into one out of the other.

Most consoles that have firewire on them are used for the audio to exit the board to a computer and not input audio to the board.

Does this mean that something like the Presonus digital mixer firewire connections cannot be used for the socalled "virtual soundcheck"


Thank you for your time.

 

[Silas Pradetto]

Re: Any firewire experts here?

After reading the IEEE1394 specifications, and considering the allowed cable lengths and the fact that it can run natively on cat5 and fiber, I don't doubt that what you want could be done, Kristian. Additionally, Firewire does NOT require a computer to work, like USB does.

Finding hardware that supports the newer Firewire specifications might be tricky, as I'm not sure the old Firewire 400 can run down more than 15 feet of cable. I Googled for Firewire extenders and found nothing useful.

I was not aware that new Firewire specification was getting so insane, or that it was used for such cool and awesome things as safety systems on the F22 Raptor!

 

[mackerr]

Network audio

I am investigating the different possibilities for transferring multiple audio lines from one location to the next without using traditional cabling and am wondering whether a cat5 cable with a firewire extendor and interface either end is plausible. The interfaces would have to have the correct connections to mate up with whatever needs to be connected on the gig in question: This could be mic preamps or line level ADs or adat interfaces for digital mixer I/O or analog I/O for analog mixers.

I have no firewire interfaces.

I was thinking more along the lines of two stand-alone interfaces talking to eachother and just transferring whatever comes into one out of the other.

Why deal with the channel limits of whatever FW interface you find? There are network products that will do what you want with the addition of a network switch. Telos Axia audio nodes will give you 16 line in and 16 line out at every node. They cannot plug directly into each other, so require a commercial grade switch, but can be expanded up to many hundreds of channels, with an open network topology. You can put I/O boxes anywhere you need them. They can co-exist with other data on the network, so you can send control data over the same network, or even Internet access. Using the right switches you can go as far as you want over fiber, or Ethernet distances over CAT5 or CAT6.

There are other option than Telos, but that is the one I have been using for at least 4 years.

Mac

 

[kristianjohnsen]

Re: Network audio

Why deal with the channel limits of whatever FW interface you find?

To save money.

There are network products that will do what you want with the addition of a network switch. Telos Axia audio nodes will give you 16 line in and 16 line out at every node. They cannot plug directly into each other, so require a commercial grade switch, but can be expanded up to many hundreds of channels, with an open network topology. You can put I/O boxes anywhere you need them. They can co-exist with other data on the network, so you can send control data over the same network, or even Internet access. Using the right switches you can go as far as you want over fiber, or Ethernet distances over CAT5 or CAT6.

There are other option than Telos, but that is the one I have been using for at least 4 years.

Mac

I am researching many options at the moment, and the firewire option seems like a cool lounge-level tool to know about - if it works.

For a "heavyduty" system this won't be a good solution and I'm looking at a number of other ideas including some you suggested in a DM 2000-thread I started on the old LAB. Thank you for those suggestions and for the ones given here.

Have you gotten to try out the Focusrite Rednet gear? A Dante snake/network seems very interesting.

 

[kristianjohnsen]

Re: Any firewire experts here?

After reading the IEEE1394 specifications, and considering the allowed cable lengths and the fact that it can run natively on cat5 and fiber, I don't doubt that what you want could be done, Kristian. Additionally, Firewire does NOT require a computer to work, like USB does.

Finding hardware that supports the newer Firewire specifications might be tricky, as I'm not sure the old Firewire 400 can run down more than 15 feet of cable. I Googled for Firewire extenders and found nothing useful.

I was not aware that new Firewire specification was getting so insane, or that it was used for such cool and awesome things as safety systems on the F22 Raptor!

Thank you for your suggestions and encouragement, Silas.

The 32 channel firewire interface you mentioned in another thread: Would it be possible to connect two of those to get 32 I/O?

 

[Brian jojade]

Re: Any firewire experts here?

This isn't a question about firewire. It's a question regarding a digital snake. Re-title your post about that, and you'll likely get more relevant answers.

 

[Silas Pradetto]

Re: Any firewire experts here?

Thank you for your suggestions and encouragement, Silas.

The 32 channel firewire interface you mentioned in another thread: Would it be possible to connect two of those to get 32 I/O?

I honestly have no idea. Owning only a single unit doesn't allow me to test that.