Making Music
  Computer Music Software and Hardware

Clark cable

Cables for connecting peripherals is always a consideration. SCSI's short-run, heavy and thick cables were limited and difficult to handle even though latest developments have improved on the length of the runs.

The IEEE-1394 spec allows for 4.5m cables, the same as USB, but glass optical fibre cables can be used for runs up to 50m and 100m - ideal for studio use and venue events. This means, just to spell it out, that you could set up computers in one room with controllers and interfaces in another, removing any hum, fan noise, disk whirs or other computer noises from the recording environment.

FireWire devices can be daisy-chained with up to 16 devices in the chain, although it's probably neater to use a hub.

Apple's FireWire 400 connectors use six wires, Sony's iLink, as we have seen, uses four, and FireWire 800 uses nine. You can use FireWire 400 and 800 devices on an 800 line but you will probably need an adapter. There are adapters for 4-to-6 pins and 6-to-9 pins. As ever, these currently come at a premium and typically cost from £20 upwards. The price of technology...

The FireWire Future

Although FireWire 400 has been the standard for a while, certainly on the Mac, it has the potential to go much faster. IEEE-1346b, implemented in 2002, lead to FireWire 800 and lays down the groundwork for speeds of 1600Mbps and then 3200Mbps - that's fast!

FireWire 800 was triumphed a couple of years ago on Apple's 17" PowerBook G4 which sported a FireWire 800 socket as well as a FireWire 400 socket. 1394b is what makes it possible to connect FireWire 400 devices up to 100m apart because the 800 hubs and cables have been designed to work with FireWire 400 equipment.

The mLan plan

Another exciting development for musicians is mLan, a music networking system developed by Yamaha. Essentially, it uses special mLan chips to transmit MIDI, audio and sync information over a standard FireWire connection.

First generation mLan was limited to eight audio channels per device but a later second-generation chip overcame that limitation. In theory, with mLan equipment you should simply be able to link any kind of music equipment from computers and synths to signal processors and mixers via FireWire without any interfacing problems.

mLan has been around for a few years but the higher cost (each device requires a mLan chip), particularly when compared to MIDI, has meant take-up has been slow and installation has only been seen on a dribble of up-market gear.

A big push came with Yamaha's 01X Music Production Studio which helped raise the mLan profile. But mLan needs wide-spread incorporation, much like MIDI in the 80s when a manufacturer daren't release an instrument without those sockets, before it becomes universally accepted. As MIDI is starting to feel its age and as most studio systems are based around a computer, mLan would be incredibly useful and powerful.

So the future of music could be mLan with FireWire at its core. At the very least, FireWire offers many advantages for both general computer users and musicians so when you're contemplating a new device check if a FireWire version is available. That will help future-proof your system and offer improved performance.

For more info... Since Apple was largely responsible for developing FireWire, the Apple site is a good place for more information: http://developer.apple.com/devicedrivers/firewire/ The homepage of the IEEE-1394 organisation is at: www.1394ta.org For more on mLan look at: www.yamahasynth.com/products/mlan/index.html