NAMM: Presonus FIREPOD Firewire I/O Brings Tubes to FireWire, Audio Hardware Options

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NAMM: Presonus FIREPOD Firewire I/O Brings Tubes to FireWire

[macyu]

mLan is a protocol that you can run on top of Firewire (aka IEEE1394)

other protocols that can run on it are customized ones such as what the new FirePOD will use, and also TCP/IP (starting from OS X 10.3 and Windows XP)

[Nels]

But, is mLan something I want to stay away from?

At first, mLan seemed to be a cool thing, but lately I've been reading how Tascam, for example, has stopped incorporating mLan in their most recent products, due to unstable functionality.

And it has been suggested by some in this forum to stay away from mLan.

So, needless to say, I'm a bit bewildered.

I'm hoping to finally decide on the most stable/reliable of DAWS protocol. ...The Yamaha O1X along with DP4 looked to be the perfect colution, but now I'm incredibly suspicious.

[swilder]

I am by no means an expert on the subject. But I think the problem arises when a company like Yamaha tries to take something that's standardized, such as Firewire. And then tries to make it proprietary (mLan). Why would all the other companies out there want to write code that is proprietary when there's an open standard that works just fine?

Apple, and apple users tend to not like proprietary software. Which is why iTunes has continued to work with open standards such as mp4, and stay away from things like windows media.

All proprietary stuff does is create an us versus them mentality. And that's not good for anyone.

Just my 2 cents

Scott

This post has been edited by swilder: Wed 4 Feb 2004, 18:20

[lepetitmartien]

Until I see the new and improved mlan protocol used by the newest of Yamaha gear, I'd have to say that mlan was only good in theory, and ended up very messy in implementation.

For your information, the demo booth of Yamaha at NAMM was all mLAN wired. And it worked.

The problems with mLAN is that products and softwares are slow to come in but it's going faster now. The Firewire 800 will be the start factor I think.

The FirePOD does have tubes.  In the specs, it says "Eight class A mic preamps."  Class-A refers to the tube amplification design.

Class A refers to the amplification design (A, B or AB)

A is small amplification, high fidelity, low distortion
B is high gain, low fidelity, distortion
AB is a mixup and sits in the middle.

You can make tube design in A, AB or B…
As you can make bad tube designs…

And there's no tubes in the Firepod…

Now swilder, mLAN is developped on top of FireWire because FW is only a "tubing" it move data, there's nothing "more" to it which is bot enough for the purpose of mLAN. MLAN provides support to efficiently move MIDI, DIgital Audio and Digital Video over FW, with timing under scrutiny as FW is not real time. It secures FW for these applications.

And it allows users to get rid of some cables too…

Now the slow rise come from many things… Apple used FW only 5 years afters creating it, Yamaha even if present from the begining took 8-9 years to start demoing something working and a couples years more to issue products. 14 years now after the start of FW at Apple other companies are catching up, and I believe it's important, controler chips for FW are less expensive (guess why there's more USB out there than FW? Even if USB is definetly NOT taylored for real time and audio streams.)

MLAN is coming from Yamaha but others have joined…

[macyu]

ah sorry for the mis-information. I'm no electrical engineer so I always thought that class-a amplifier designs had something to do with using vacuum tubes

[Nels]

swilder,

Your voice of conviction is admirable, but I don't understand how you can suggest that Yamaha is creating an us versus them mentality, when it's pretty clear that they're trying to iliminate all that. Or at least somewhat more than saaaaay, >>>>>>>>Digidesign.

I would venture to say that if any one company was to be blamed for that kind of protocol/mentality, I'm sure even the heartist of Pro Tools users would say that it was the good folks at Digidesign.

I don't know if mLan will ever be perfected and/or become the standard, but I for one, sure hope that it does. And it's getting better all the time.

[dmrkh]

Actually meant to type "iLink", as in the same Sony that now markets the very nice Vegas solution (give a pc devil its due).

How does mLan run in conjunction with FW800 vs. FW400?
Is this impractical? What seperates mLan being a "dongle" of another color?

[macyu]

ok, the thing about mlan is that it's just a language that devices with firewire can use to talk to other devices on firewire. it's not a dongle nor is it a special cable. anyways, the thing that is being viewed as being bad about mlan is that the support has been weak, and the licensing cost was expensive. ofcourse, if and when it works, it will be wonderful, as you can hook up all mlan compatible audio gear together just using firewire - forget about having tons of audio cables, each with different connectors as well as separate midi cables, and this connection doesn't even require a computer in the middle of it all