Re: Firewire vs USB

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 12:52 PM, andy butler <akbutler@tiscali.co.uk> 
wrote:
> One thing missed out of the discussion so far is the physical
> weakness of Firewire connectors.
> It's easy to get a lost connection.
> ...and a damaged socket can easily cause damage to the circuit within.
>
> or have people had similar with usb?


You're right regarding most Windows only computer hardware. On Apple
machines there is a more sturdy Firewire plug and jack. Over here I
still use extra power supply for Firewire gear even when connecting it
to an Apple machine, for stability reasons. On a Mac you can power
external Firewire gear through the firewire cable, but if doing so a
temporary firewire drop-out, like if the cable gets wiggled during
"the  battle on the stage", can cause the operating system to switch
over to the Mac's bult-in audio card. But when feeding power
externally (not through the Firewire cable) the OS will not lose sight
of the Firewire unit even if the Firewire cable should fall out and
you put it back into the jack. (WARNING! This does not apply to hard
drives - only audio interfaces)

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se
www.perboysen.com
www.looproom.com internet music hub