Firewire Or Usb? Options

[ghant]

Is USB good enough to record with? Im in the process of purchasing an Audio interface for my Powerbook and I cant decided on what platform to use. I know Firewire is fast but the units are also exspensive. I wont be recording more than a mic and a guitar so I dont need that much. I want something with XLR in with phatom power and some other little features. Anyone suggest anything? So I just go with USB since its cheaper?

Thanks

[ghant]

As Stergz recently put it in another thread:

As far as USB being bad for Audio, I don't know why this one keeps popping up. Thats like saying that a cup is really bad for holding water! Small cup, small water. Big cup, big water. USB 1.1 is fine for about 4-6 24bit audio streams (both ways) while firewire is good for many more. I have successfully recording live bands with no problems on a Digidesign mBox with a stereo spaced pair of Rode NT5's.

Well said. So, USB should be just fine for what you're trying to do. I'd suggest theMbox, which comes with ProTools LE and is OSX ready. For a cheaper option, look at Tascam's US-122, which comes bundled with a very limited OEM version of Cubasis VST (OS9 only). Do you already have multitracking software? What OS?

So the quality is the quality is the same for USB and Firewire?

I have DP4 on OSX.