Firewire to SPDIF

Arj & Cerrot -- Not sure if this is relevant, but I want to make you aware that firewire chips made by Via, which are widely used on many motherboards and cards that have firewire interfaces, have a long tradition of not working very well. TI (Texas Instruments) firewire chips are vastly preferable.

That is documented in many user posts you can find on the net, and I can tell you from personal experience that when doing digital video captures Via firewire chips drop frames at least every few minutes, while TI chips NEVER do, even in the same machine running the same programs. Although of course the data rates that involves are considerably higher than for audio.

You should be able to determine which chip you have by looking at the board or card, or possibly from the manufacturer's literature.

Hope that helps,
-- Al

Thanks, Al. Very good point. Another reason why I think Arj's interface is the issue. I have the TI chip and haven't had a dropout. I couldn't find much on the Compaq interface Arj is using.

Hi Al, Cerrot
2 days back i tried it with a Ornage link card which apparently uses an NEC shipset. cant really say it was better. my guess is Frewire cards+Laptop isnot good enough from an audio point of view..

Sorry to hear, Arj. I really feel Firewire is the better interface (over usb) but haven't played with it on a laptop/outboard card. Sorry for your experience.