Tapas Das
Latency with USB interface
Sat Sep 22 14:01:10 2001


Wily,

It is true. USB is not very good with Digital Audio when used in 
a professional setup. Aside from the slower speed of USB 1.1 (12Mbps),
it also puts a strain on the CPU of your computer. All the data flow tasks
(bus mastering) must be done by the host CPU. This slows it down. 
You get data hiccups.

Firewire is much faster (400Mbps) and also handles its own bus mastering.

USB works well for connecting peripherals of low to medium data bandwidths
like mice, keyboards, printers and scanners. Firewire is better at
transferring high volume digital and audio data streams.

Yes, you are right. The little squarish port marked with an "i" is the 
FireWire port on the Sony VAIO PCG-520. Sony calls the Firewire "i-Link".
This is to differentiate from another Sony protocol named "s-Link" used
to communicate between Sony devices.

If you are running Windows 98SE, having 256MB of RAM will be sufficient.

Why not wait for a couple of months for the Tascam to hit the market?
Many manufacturers have offered to support their products on this unit.
Cakewalk Sonar is one of them. You could always buy from a local merchant
that would give you a 30 day warranty to try it out first.

Tapas.