I can't afford to spend that kind of money on something that i already heard has alot of problems. I have not actually tested any firewire audio interfaces because of all the problems i have heard about.

I wanted to get a high quality firewire audio interface like maybe down the road, an RME fireface.

So it seems i may only have the option of trying a usb audio interface, which i really didn't want to do.

Well, i researched that only to hear lots of people not being able to get various brands of firewire express cards to work either!!! In fact, i could not find a single person that was able to get one to work. My next option: The Z96JS laptop does not have PCMCIA, it has the newer Express Card slot, so my next thought was, 'maybe i can get a firewire express card and use that'. Most manufacturers won't even tell you what firewire chipset is in a laptop. It turns out that my laptop(as well as various other brands/models) uses a Ricoh firewire chipset, which i read in various soundcard forums that it does not work right, or only works with higher latency settings. What i found out is that if you intend on using firewire for audio interface, your firewire MUST use a Texas Instruments chipset. Now it is 5 months later and i have saved up some $ to get a good audio interface, just to find out that only some of the newer laptops out there are compatible with firewire audio interfaces. I also asked for help in knowing what is important in making this decision. I bought an ASUS Z96JS laptop specifically to use for reaktor and audio work.īefore purchasing, I spent countless hours researching specifications important to deciding on a laptop suitable for audio work.

Firewire interface for laptop