PRR...
there is a hive of activity these days around firewire. Whilst almost all pc's come with USB1 ports (and more and more with USB2), I've been told that there are inherant flaws within USB2 which doesn't lend itself easy to maintaining steady data flow into a PC.
Firewire's protocol has been designed around streaming media, and as such many of the companies I know of are developing Firewire solutions. The main reason we've seen a slow take up of firewire solutions is that they are so damn hard to make!
Let me draw you a picture of where we are at the moment with audio-interface silicon. This is what I remember from some reading I did a few months ago... I think it's 90% correct. (I'm just covering my ass, in case i'm wrong!)
There are plenty of USB1 stereo devices on the market, which are literally plug and play. TI has the PCM29xx family of USB devices, that you squirt raw analogue into, or S/PDIF, and windows&mac automatically detect it as a stereo i/o port. Nice... Lovely in fact. In such an example, the main drawback is sampling rate.
In terms of USB2, I can't speak for others in the market, but TI only has a USB-ATAPI bridge at this point. Realistically, I don't there's enough demand for a USB2 plug and play type solution for multichannel audio. (Sure, we're demanding... very demanding! but the market sizr is too small to justify that kind of investment).
Moving on to 1394... I've seen grown men shudder at the thought of 1394... It's tough - very, very, very tough, but the rewards are very obvious. High speed, low latency, stable clocked audio and video down the same piece of copper *bliss*.
There are 2 main competitors in the 1394 game (that I see on a regular basis). One is a swiss company called Bridgeco, and the other is TI. Bridgco's solution is aimed at audio companies. They have a 2 chip solution that uses their own ARM based processor, and a TI PHY (Physical Layer) chip. (PHY Layer is used as the final 'electronic' link to the 1394 bus).
TI's solution is a single chip beast. In terms of potential, it wipes the floor with the bridgco solution. BUT (and i'm not ashamed of using the word but when i discuss TI product). It's a beast to program, and support for anything under the big Japanese guys is hard to come by.
Before xmas, I had a little dig and prod into the commercial aspects of the solutions. The TI silicon itself is very cheap, but, we charge $$$$ for the software (well, a 3rd party does in fact). Bridgeco's solution is more like a pay as you go... you more per chip, but if you're building in low volume, it tends to work in your favour.
Anyway, that's where things were 6 months ago, maybe things have changed since then. Does anyone have any new news on these things?
Thanks again
R