Try this FireWire test for yourself; it requires that you have a DAW and that the CPU has a 1394 spigot. (That, in itself, is a bit of a trick in many cases as Intel has steadfastly refused to support 1394: They’ve got USB, dammit, and that’s the end of the argument.) Ask the DAW manufacturer whether, for the recording of audio data, it supports Micronet’s SANcube or any other 1394-attached storage. The answer most likely will be, “Real soon now.” It seems that most folks I’ve talked to can’t get the disks they’ve tested to behave consistently. Drivers could be to blame, but no one will fess up.

Then there’s the jitter issue. As FireWire is a packet-switched bus, there’s no synchronous clock carried along to convey timing. And there are a myriad of sources of jitter within the 1394 transport protocol, the main source being that you have a free-running oscillator in every node on the bus. Says design consultant and engineer Julian Dunn, “The IEEE 1394 format uses asynchronous clocks at each node. The interaction of these clocks with each other and with the sample (word) clock generates jitter.” Given that, Digital Harmony has devised many tricks to bring the aggregate jitter down to something reasonable, like changing the nature of the jitter so psychoacoustically, the result is less annoying. Bob Moses says that Digital Harmony’s new silicon should deliver something in the “100 picosecond range.” They’ve even managed to “hide” house sync on the bus. (By the way, Bob founded Wadia Digital, considered by many to make super-sweet converters. So, he’s no tin ear.)

Working Toward Compatibility
“For pro audio applications, you don’t have a protocol stack that goes all the way into the application layer yet, and so each company is looking at different ways of solving this; and we could have a real interoperability problem if we’re not careful,” says Bob Moses. “There’s a lot of companies that want to be first to the street with new equipment, so they’d have bragging rights…The industry needs to pull together on this; otherwise, we’re going to wind up with the same problem as with our computers.” That is, poor compatibility at great cost in wasted time and frustration. That’s where Digital Harmony comes in, trying to come up with a system and implementation guidelines so manufacturers can collaboratively ensure that all the boxes that have that plug on them work together. They’re not the only ones worrying about this. Roger Siminoff, one of Apple’s senior marketing managers, echoed the same sentiment. “We are committed to the best user experience for creative professionals, so they spend their valuable time creating instead of troubleshooting,” he says. “Working toward one connector for storage, audio and MIDI can contribute to that commitment.”

According to figures predicted by industry maven Cahners, 200 million 1394-equipped products will have shipped by 2003. Sony’s recent smash hit, Playstation II, has the dynamic duo of 1394 and DVD; it should ship more than 20 million of the little beasties by the end of next year. Though it isn’t perfect, 1394 is here for the long haul, and as Bob Moses says, “It gets us 90 percent of the way to a universal standard” for media production and dissemination. Just keep your fingers crossed.

Reprinted with permission from Magazine, November, 2000
© 2000, Intertec Publishing, A Primedia Company All Rights Reserved.