Where Are The Firewire Audio/midi Interfaces?, Inexplicable absence of what should be Options

[Levon River]

Firewire has been around for over ten years. Does anyone have any insight into why there are so precious few audio/midi interfaces utilizing this technology?

The field is glutted with USB interfaces, which only carry about 1/40 the bandwidth and information transfer capability of Firewire.

Of the few Firewire interfaces on the market, the cheapest I can find (MOTU's 828) starts at over $800.00--and that doesn't include MIDI, while being complete overkill on the audio side for my needs. Five years ago I expected to SOON see Firewire interfaces for audio and MIDI that would be affordable and accessible. Now there are quite a few under $500.00 using USB, but NONE in t hat price bracket using Firewire.

I think the market is ripe for a Firewire interface with, e.g., four audio inputs and two MIDI ins and outs priced for the masses. Why, oh, why was it not there years ago?

[Levon River]

Er, it was actually you who went off-topic first in your post of 15th August, where you described the Core Audio and Midi implementation pre-10.2 as "half-assed".

It wasn't remotely off topic. It was (and still is) my *speculation* regarding *why* there are no firewire combination audio/midi interfaces--which *is* this topic, which I started.

My point in even *mentioning* the Logic anomaly, which seemed to be easily understandable by most, was that I believe OS problems account for the slow/no development in COMBINATION AUDIO/MIDI products in BOTH hardware and software, the software side of which I've covered more specifically in another thread that maybe you can find. [Hint: it's called "Day 952--still No Pro Sequencer For Os X."]

Illustrative *only* of my reasoning for speculating that OS problems were behind slow/no development in the HARDWARE arena for combination audio/MIDI products was the example of *evidence* of hold-ups on the SOFTWARE side as well for COMBINATION AUDIO/MIDI products. The entire point was that this lends some weight to the possiblity of there having been a central OS X issue--which is the one thing that would affect BOTH hardware and software development for COMBINATION AUDIO/MIDI products--and that perhaps it's not all just attributable to the sloth of developers, which seems to be the drum you want to beat.

The COMMON element, since you still missed it apparently, is the scarcity of COMBINATION AUDIO/MIDI products for OS X--both in hardware *and* in software--and so the point I was making about pre-Jauar OS problems being a possible, if not likely, culprit affecting BOTH hardware and software is entirely germane to this discussion of the HARDWARE side of the equation. The mention of an example from the software side was merely *supportive* and *illustrative* of that entire rationale--the OS being the thing that BOTH hardware and software must work with.

You decided to climb onto my mere mention of that supporting evidence (from the software side of the same equation) like a hobby-horse and ride it to death as an excuse to give me an unsolicited lecture on the marketing frailties of music software developers, which is not the topic, and was not at all the point of my mentioning the anomaly of the Logic for OS X press release--that being merely illustrative of further *evidence* for my reasoning that a long-term OS problem might likely lie at the center of all of it.

That's *still* my position, and I think it's consistent with the facts--one very RELATED fact (to possible OS problems) *including* the announced release of Logic for OS X that has now been delayed for an entire year. You don't think it has anything to do with any OS problems. Fine. Nobody here, including me, is stopping you from saying so. So your characterization that I was somehow trying to wear the moderator's hat was entirely disengenuous.

Beat your drum all you want. But why not start a new thread called "The sloth and devious marketing practices of software developers for OS X, which, itself, has always been perfect," since that seems to be what you're trying to discuss in this thread. I'm not.