Crazy firewire adapter idea. Do you think this would work?

Background:

Some of you may remember that I went to a lot of trouble recently to get hold of a tablet PC that was big enough to display a sheet at 8.5" x 11" in portrait mode. The purpose was for using it as an electronic songbook for all of my chord charts and lyric sheets. I eschewed ipads and other tablets because they weren't big enough, and the few modern laptops with big enough screens either did not convert to flat tablet format, or, if they were tablets, they had 16x9 screens that were 13" diagonal, tops, which, due to the aspect ratio, just couldn't get wide enough. The Sony Tap 20 was big enough, but that one turns out to be actually TOO big. I eventually found what I was looking for in a very old XP-Tablet-Edition PC with a low rez 1024x768 screen, combined with some custom software I wrote.

This is working well, and I have now come to depend upon it. But it's old and slow, so it's not really useful to me as an actual laptop for doing actual work upon. Pretty much its only useful purpose is to use as a chart display during rehearsals and performance.

I'd really like a newer PC in that role, so that I can use it for multiple purposes, including to use as an actual laptop on the road, to replace my aging desktop in the recording studio, and also as the songbook display. (It's a real shame the Apple MacBook Pros don't fold over into tablet form or I'd already have one.)

I noticed that Sony and other companies are starting to sell some 15.5" convertibles now. This is the biggest convertible tablet I've seen so far. It still doesn't quite get up to 8.5" x 11" (the 16:9 screen means that in portrait mode it's only 7.6" wide) but it's starting to get really really close. I might be able to live with that, though I'd have to try it out for a while. I'm considering just grabbing one, just to have as my main laptop, and if it happens to work out as a songbook display, fantastic.

But here's what's stopping me.

I also like the idea that any new laptop I get, I can use it as a desktop PC replacement too. Which I'm sure that Sony Flip would do admirably at, since my desktop is so old and slow that just about anything would be amazing by comparison. But there's a problem. I've invested quite a bit of money into audio recording gear that runs only on firewire. And no new laptops have firewire. The one I'm thinking of getting doesn't even have a PCI-E card slot for a firewire adapter.

All of the information above is just background, to describe the corner I've painted myself into. Now here's what I'm wondering if it will get me out of this corner:

Does anyone think that daisy chaining a USB-to-expresscard adapter with a Firewire to Expresscard adapter, and putting that into the firewire audio interface would work? Or is this just too rube-goldberg to have any hope of functioning at all?

(Ima try the adapters on my existing computer. 60 bucks total with free Prime shipping. If it works, then I know I can get the actual computer and it'll work).

Bandwidth and throughout might be an issue, if all the drivers align and it works at all.

USB 2.0 is rated 480mbit/sec but actual is often much less than the FireWire 400mbit/sec. FireWire was designed to accommodate smooth and reliable data streaming, USB not so much.

On an old computer with a slow CPU you may or may not encounter USB throughput issues with this adapter hardware series that a faster and newer computer could overcome.

This is audio. Even USB 1.1 (12mbit/sec) could handle it, speedwise. So USB 2.0 Hi-Speed (480mbit/sec) won't have that issue.

Nesting drivers though, particularly on MS operating systems, is an entirely different kettle.

You could invest in USB audio contraptions rather than Firewire, but that obviously leaves behind all the money you spent on your Firewire gear. Most new tablets have USB 3.0, so there's plenty of bandwidth at least.

In terms of new tablets, there are several 18+" tablet with desktop docking stations and internal batteries long enough to be usable for your gigs. You might like the Sony Tap 21, the Dell XPS 18, or the Asus P1801 (and there's probably more where they came from).

Have you considered a standalone audio recorder of some sort? You might want to separate out your audio recording from your sheet music display for a variety of reasons.

Wouldn't Thunderbolt be the way to go for this? Apple make a Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter although reportedly this has issues with devices that require power... But I've seen some really interesting looking external Thunderbolt -> PCIe Card enclosures which you may be able to just put a real desktop Firewire Card into.

I'd imagine that it would work pretty well.

Generally that's true. However with the particular audio interface I'm talking about, it's ten channels of audio, at 24-bit resolution uncompressed at 44.1kh (with an option to go to 96khz if I want).



Yep. That's among my worries. Well, it was inexpensive to try it out, we shall see on Tuesday when the adapters arrive. At least both adapters are from the same manufacturer, so that's giving it the best chance for the drivers to play nice with each other (though that's no guarantee).



That's certainly on my radar, but in addition to the money, I really like the gear I've got, and I'm settled on a particular configuration that's working well for the way I have my studio laid out. But yeah, Firewire is dying out and it wouldn't hurt for me to invest in some gear that's going to last into the future. It's a consideration.



The Sony Tap 21 is out of the picture, since the Tap 20 was already too big. No way I could travel with it, no way we could have it be on stage with us.

I'm going to look again at the 18" units. I seem to remember looking at the Dell 18" unit around the time I was looking at the Sony 20, and I seem to recall it was still too big, but I'll look again. Also: Though the Dell website is making it hard for me to find this out at the moment, I'm pretty sure the 18" Dell will also have the same problem with No Firewire Port.

The other 18" unit, the Asus, I remember looking at a while ago. Assuming it's the same one that I'm thinking of, it isn't a computer, it's an android tablet that acts as a monitor when plugged in, and a Windows Remote Desktop client when portable (requiring that I be on the Wifi with its base station to work). That design is not useful to me for my purposes, and is out of the picture.

I know this seems weird that I'm saying "it's got to be big enough" and then suddenly saying "it's too big" once they're big enough, but the problem is that goddamn 16:9 aspect ratio that's killing me. The 16:9 ratio is what makes this such a difficult sweet spot to hit. I've already proved that a 15" tablet in the 4:3 ratio is perfect. It's looking like 15.5" or slightly larger, but not TOO much larger, will be needed if I want to do it at the 16:9 ratio.



Getting an Apple computer for my recording studio is definitely on my radar. It would solve a lot of problems. But Apple does not make a convertible tablet like that Sony Flip 15. I would not be able to *also* use the Apple as the onstage songbook.

And the 3rd party ones are expensive.

... And too small. 13 inches is out of the picture. If they made a 15.5" one, I'd be interested.

It appears that Asus has two variants on their tablet. One is an Android-only device. The other is some sort of dual-booting thing with a docking station. Still, no Firewire.

The Asus dual-booting thing with a docking station.... that's the one I'm talking about. The Asus Transformer AiO P1801. It's one of the ones I investigated "Back When".

The "dual booting thing with the docking station" makes you think that it's a Windows PC, but it's not. It *docks* to a Windows PC at which point it becomes the Windows PC's monitor, but when undocked, it's an Android tablet that's using an android version of Remote Desktop to talk to the Windows PC base station so it can continue to pretend that it's a Windows PC. It happens so seamlessly that, supposedly, you don't realize anything has changed. The problem is, you have to be within WiFi range of your (theoretically working) home wifi network to use it as anything other than an Android tablet. So, no taking it on the road, so, out of the picture for me.

Hm. Of course the idea of just having an 18-inch Android Tablet, all by itself, is now making me wonder what kinds of sheet music display software are available on Android. I wonder if I could take an 18-inch Android tablet on the road successfully without breaking it. Hmmm.

HMMMM.

I didn't realize that's how it works. That's weird.

I don't know about sheet-reading Android apps, but there are certainly a variety of PDF apps.

Yeah, it's pretty weird! I think they were going with the idea that an 18-inch tablet computer was useless if it were heavy enough to be a full Windows PC. Dell's 18-inch unit and the Sony Tap20 and Tap21 are going the other route, banking on some people's need for an actual PC to take with them.

The thread I started here on the BBS about the music tablet a while back has made a few folks email me privately, folks who were not members of the BBS but who stumbled upon my thread via googling. One of them was keen on that Asus 18-inch unit, and despite my warning them that it wasn't actually a Windows PC, they ended up getting it anyway, and they like it. They ended up using a PDF reader application on Android to get their job done (like you suggested), since ForScore is only available on IOS.

While a PDF reader app would fullfill the minimum of showing me things on the screen, it wouldn't have all the features I really need for such a task. I'd want either a dedicated music reader program, or, have it just be Windows PC so that I can run my own software that I've already written and that works so well on the Toshiba tablet I've already got. That's why I want to try that Sony Flip 15 so much.

Theoretically, I'll get the FireWire daisy chain adapters tonight, and be able to test them and see if that Sony would work for me for all my purposes.

In addition to the basic functionality of the driver concerns, Tom brought up a good point that daisy-chaining adapters like that might introduce unwanted amounts of *latency*, something that's always a consideration for audio recording. It can be compensated for, but doing so is a bit of a pain. I'm curious to see how it goes. Wish me luck!

One other random idea: how about a Japanese-market-only giant e-ink display?
http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/07/sony-digital-paper-device/

(I've been looking into all these weirdo tablets for a voting machine project...)

Yes, something like that would be ideal. A4 paper layout is not quite as ideal as US Letter layout for song charts, but it's workable. (It's slightly narrower, than letter, and my layout style prefers wider, but it's certainly at least as good as that 15.5" Sony Flip laptop I'm considering.)

We brought up E-ink in the other thread, and I loved the idea, I just couldn't find anyone making something like that. That thing's price tag shows why. But still, looks attractive. Really, the ultimate solution for me would be a regular laptop with a hacked-on letter-sized E-ink display taped to the top.

The big advantage of an E-ink display, besides battery life, is that I could use it successfully for outdoor gigs in the sun. That Toshiba convertible tablet I'm currently using is totally lost in sunlight, so I had to go oldskool and print out the set list for our last outdoor gig. Don't know how the Sony tablet would fare in sunlight.

And, unless it is backlit like the new Kindle PaperWhite, you don't know how it would do in a low-light situation.

tanstaafl.

The low-light situation for any E-paper display is a solvable problem. Just like it is for old skool sheet music on an old skool music stand. I already have that problem solved.

Well, so far it's a bust, but not because the concept is flawed, but rather because the products I bought are entirely DOA and non functional out of the box. Plugged them into two different PCs and the devices don't register at all, the LED does not come on, windows Device Manager doesn't refresh, etc.... The USB device did not work on either a PC with USB 2.0, or a laptop with USB 3.0. The PCI-E device did not work either when plugged into the USB adapter, or, when plugged directly into a PCI-E slot on the laptop.

Maybe I'll research if there are better brands of these kinds of things.

Naw, looks like I'm out of luck. I found some more stuff by googling. It seems that the only ExpressCard-to-USB adapters are just a couple of wires connecting the pins. The idea is that some expresscards are, at their heart, just USB devices in the expresscard form factor. Broadband modems are a common version of this. Such an adapter will only work with those kinds of cards.

So unless I can find a 1394 adapter which does the complicated bit of actual USB translation, I'm out of luck. My googling tells me that no such thing exists.

So the Sony Flip is not something I'm going to ever buy since it doesn't have firewire or expresscard.

Might just choose to get a Mac for the studio still (would need the thunderbolt to firewire connector), and keep searching for a lighter weight version of the music tablet as a separate device.

Now I'm seriously considering (as was already suggested and considered earlier in this thread) getting a USB audio interface and just Ebaying my Firewire audio interface (and also ebaying another old Firewire audio interface I'm not using too).

Right now my existing firewire audio interface is still selling for 400 retail, 200-300 on ebay. A new USB version of essentially the same interface from the same company is selling retail for 500. Recoup half of my investment on the old firewire interface (if I do it now before firewire is completely outdated) for the peace of mind of future forward compatibility? Sure!

After that, I'm free to choose whatever I want for a PC: Apple, windows, tablet, whatever.

Yeah, USB for sure this time.

With the new computer and the accessories on its way, I found it interesting just how much extra gear I had to get, above and beyond the computer, in order to bring it up to parity with the desktop (to be a proper desktop replacement) and to also simultaneously be useful as my mobile device. Here's a list:

- Carrying case. (Didn't have to buy, I already have a couple of those.)
- USB keyboard. (I happened to have an extra that I wasn't using. I don't like it as much as the existing PS/2 keyboard I was using, but I won't have a PS/2 port on the new system.)
- Second power supply, so I can leave the one docked at the desk, and the other one in the carrying case.
- Dual monitor docking station, so that I can display on my dual monitors and also dock with other USB devices with a minimum of cable fuss.
- Extra HDMI-to-DVI adapter cable because the docking station strangely has one DVI output and one HDMI output.
- External DVD drive, since laptops don't come with those any more.
- External USB3 hard drive enclosure, because my current system of having a bare SATA backup drive sitting outside the case, tethered by SATA and power cables directly to the motherboard, won't fly any more.
- The aforementioned USB studio recording interface because no one puts firewire on laptops any more.
- An FTDI-chipset RS-232 serial converter, because this is the first time I'll be without a serial port, and getting to my empeg's serial port is still just as important to me as always.

Interesting note about that serial port: I deliberately went out of my way to find one with the FTDI chipset, because the new computer is Windows 8, and the more commonly-found Prolific Chipset adapters have an interesting problem: If you get an older XA/HXA chipset version of the Prolific adapter (again, the most common thing out there still), its drivers won't work on Windows 8. I only know this because of my job at work. Anywhere online where you might buy a USB-to-serial adapter, it rarely says the chipset at all, let alone the sub-version of the chipset.

Anyway, all tolled, it ends up being about 700 bucks or so of extra gear, in addition to the laptop itself. I found that amusing. I'll recoup some of that when I ebay the old Firewire audio interface, but still.

Remember when Apple first started killing off "legacy" ports and such (floppies, ADB, SCSI, serial, etc.)? Now we're clearly seeing the downstream effects of that sort of thinking. A buddy of mine has a very expensive film scanner with a SCSI interface. The scanner still works great, but he has to keep around an ancient computer to run it. (Yes, there are USB-SCSI adapters, but then you have to worry about whether or not you've got the right one, much like you're worrying about specific USB-Serial interfaces. And as film itself is going away, the need for that scanner will also eventually go away.)

Kinda leads to an interesting question of whether USB has "won" or whether it, too, will one day become a legacy interface. I'm kinda thinking that USB may truly become the one true interface, although future USB might well be quite different from what we call USB today. USB 3.1, for example, has a connector not unlike Apple's Lightning. I'm similarly amused at how USB is increasingly the default charging interface for all sorts of otherwise-dumb rechargeable devices (e.g., the headlight and taillight on my bike).

Pretty sure that's a Displaylink DL3xxx device, so there's little bits of my code running both in the embedded firmware in the dock, and in the Windows software stack that drives it.

Peter

I wonder how USB 3.1 will square with the European effort to make micro-USB a charging standard for mobile phones?

I have not been following the Euro process closely as I regard most USB committee standards as transitory. The current USB 3.0 siamese 'B' and micro-B connectors stand as examples.

I use an Acer branded USB 3.0 dock which is DisplayLink DL3000 based, driving dual 1920x200 displays, plus giga ethernet, etc.

Only downside has been the glacial correction of issues between Mac OS X and the video drivers. Apple and DisplayLink both seem to be off their game in this regard.

The best article I've found on USB 3.1's new "type C" connector is from Anandtech. The important bits:

Seems like the all-singing all-dancing solution to everything. I would expect this to quickly obsolete the ugly USB 3.0 "siamese" connectors. I would also expect it to take a while to come out while all the all-singing-all-dancing kinks are worked out in committee.

Awesome! I shall think of you each time I dock my laptop.

Hey, since you know about this stuff, maybe you can answer a question I have. It's hard to google for this since my question is so wordy and I'm not sure of the correct terminology. I have yet to receive the laptop, I'll get it later this week. I have the dock, but no laptop to plug it into. But when I get it, I'm curious how the dock "works", so to speak. Here's my question:

Basically, I know that a video card has video outputs which map to its frame buffer. On my desktop PC, its video card has two outputs for two monitors, which run directly off the video card and map directly to its frame buffer, so I can display a 3D game running on either monitor at a frame rate which is the full capability of the video card.

My new laptop has only a middling Nvidia video chipset, but it's still heaps better than my decade-old video card in my current desktop PC, so I expect to be able to play a few relatively new games at better frame rates than my desktop could.

When I plug the docking station into the new laptop with the USB3 cable, though, how does it handle that for displaying games on the attached monitors? Does it install fresh video drivers which map to the USB device, and thus it's drivers for some sort of cheap video chipset installed in the dock, and thus, I won't be able to play a 3D game at a decent frame rate on either of the attached dual monitors? Or, is there something about the USB3 or DisplayLink standards which let the video chipset in the laptop continue to work normally, and then hand over its already-rendered video image to the dock, which then just blits the video image up to the attached monitors, so that I still get the full speed of the video card?

Yeah, new video drivers for the USB3 chipset from DisplayLink.

Note that USB3 is considerably faster than the PCI bus we all once had in our PCs, so decent video is quite possible over it. Whether or not it really is blindingly quick, depends upon the drivers.

This. *

(Or that, see Peter's response, it's platform dependent. Only had experience with DisplayLink on a Mac)

Blech.

I'm sure the USB3 cable is fast and all, but I'm pretty sure nothing that they stuff into that dock (which is little more than a glorified USB hub) will be as good as a recent Nvidia chip.

Well, one option I have, is to also go to the trouble of docking the HDMI cable to the laptop, and use only one of the monitor outputs on the dock.

The latter, except that you might not get quite the full frame-rate (especially on two monitors at once) as it takes a certain amount of CPU (not GPU) to compress the rendered frames and squirt them over USB to the dock.

Edit: At least, that's how it works in Windows. The Linux drivers work the former way. I never got involved with the Macintosh drivers, so I don't know which way they do it. Whipping away the rendered frames from under the very nose of the video driver did require substantial deviousness and cunning on the part of Displaylink's Windows driver writers, and it wouldn't surprise me if the Macintosh video driver stack didn't allow for it.

Peter

I can answer the question of how the Mac drivers work...




...they don't

Have had to give up on my DisplayLink adapter and OSX ever working reliably again.

What do you use instead?

I have yet to find a suitable Thunderbolt/DisplayLink dock configuration that can drive dual external displays.

Interesting! Well, I'm not intending to play games on both monitors, just one of them. The second monitor would have nothing changing on it, unless I chose to put up a chat window or an email checker there or something. Do you think it would help the frame rate if the second monitor didn't have any image changes?



The attached monitors are displaying data compressed images? Sigh.

Also, when I'm using this thing for audio tracking, I'm concerned about its fan noise, so anything taxing the CPU (like data compressing a video screen image) will probably increase CPU usage enough to make this thing's fan kick in. Sigh.

Thanks for the expert explanation of the way the dock functions. This is quite fascinating. Looks like I'll be using the dock for the secondary screen, and using direct-connected HDMI cable for the primary screen. I'm up to three plugs' worth of docking now (power, USB3, and HDMI), but luckily those are all grouped together on the same side of the laptop, the side facing away from me where it'll be sitting on my desk. So that's a plus.

Hm. Now that I'm committed to using the HDMI plug, I wonder if there's any way to make that HDMI cable connect into a dual-DVI setup, and I can skip the dock completely and just us a big USB3 hub instead. I wonder if a single HDMI cable has the capability to carry dual monitor information if the video driver supports it? I'll look that up. (*edit:* Nope)

I don't, I have a single external 27 inch monitor now.

Reading back on my comments, Peter, I think it looks like I'm making disparaging remarks about the Displaylink technology. Sorry about that! I want to clarify that I'm impressed by the technology, and when the laptop arrives tomorrow, I'll be hooking up both monitors directly to the dock first, with the expectation that it'll Just Work Perfectly even for games.

I've just been spoiled in the past by laptop docks with directly-connected dual DVI outputs, and it's a shame that laptops which offer that kind of option are becoming more rare. I'm impressed that USB3, combined with that Displaylink technology, has given users a workable alternative. Knowing that it does The Right Thing (as best it can within the constraints) with regard to 3D game graphics is quite impressive.

That is just the sort of thing the Matrox GXM products do.

DualHead2Go is the product name

www.matrox.com

Lossless compression is used for the actual data transfer between PC and Displaylink adapter, to decrease the USB bandwidth requirement. But it is lossless, so the image on the monitor will be as crisp and perfect as it was originally drawn.

My big beef with DisplayLink, is their utter lack of support for the USB 3.0 variants on Linux. The USB 2.0 chips/adapters all work beautifully well, but they're being cripplingly secretive about the newer superspeed devices.

Awesome! Okay, I'm not so worried about it now.

I suppose if I really wanted to lower the CPU usage, I could change my wallpaper to a solid color.

Yeah, I was just reading about that, shortly before seeing your post. Interesting idea, tricking the system into thinking it's one big desktop, sending that down the cable, and splitting it in two again. Great work-around to a mind bogglingly silly little problem that they shouldn't have ever had to work around in the first place.

I love how their spiel touts the "one taskbar across both monitors" thing as a feature, when it's really just a side effect of the trick they're doing.

I'm enjoying the way you speak authoritatively about how it works, while in the very same post admitting that Displaylink are secretive about how it works. In fact the USB3 chips (unlike the USB2 ones) do use lossy compression, though it's a dynamic scheme where it gets less and less lossy if you've got plenty of CPU or bandwidth, or large unchanging areas of screen.

Peter

Oh, really? Then my apologies.
Not that anyone outside of DisplayLink would know how the USB3 ones work.

And one more reason not to get the USB3 variants.

EDIT: And I really do have (and like) the DL-195 USB2 version!

Thanks.

So far, pretty impressed with this dock.

Using the USB3 connection, I cannot see any evidence that the image is data compressed. I was expecting it to look like Satellite TV, but it's just looking exactly like a directly-plugged monitor.

I haven't tried any games yet, I'm slowly exorcising the bloatware at the moment. But the system is working well and it's driving three monitors right now, counting the laptop.

One question: The Displaylink driver places an extra icon in the windows system tray, is there a way I can turn that off?

I don't know whether there's an option in the software itself to turn it off, but doesn't Windows itself let you tidy away system-tray icons you don't use?

Failing that, I'm pretty sure that the process that has the system-tray icon, is completely separate from the DLM process that does the actual work, so you could just arrange to not autostart the process with the icon.

Peter

I've always completely turned off that feature, since it tended to hide programs from me, programs that I didn't want to leave running. Though there were many cases of that happening to me before, here is a specific important example of why the feature is bad: Where I work, that feature is, interestingly, partially responsible for bricking certain modems. Certain models of old Verizon+Novatel modems would be bricked if you inserted them into a computer that was running the Sprint SmartView software (Sprint tries to apply its carrier profile to the Verizon modem). Since SmartView is one of those programs which auto-runs, and when you close it, instead of exiting, it minimizes into one of those tray icons, if you have the hide-trayicons feature turned on, you don't know it's running, so you'll get your verizon modem bricked if you insert it.

However, despite all that, I may reconsider my "never hide icons" policy now. Sony has a Control Center app which is important, controlling (among other things) charge limiters on the battery to improve its lifespan, Touchpad multitouch gestural control (scroll/pinch etc), the hard disk drop sensor, etc. The problem is that it also puts a couple of unwanted icons in the system tray for which there is no option to turn them off: A Scroll Lock on/off indicator (?!) and a touchpad on/off indicator. So, failing a way to get those things to turn off, I might have to enable the icon hider feature.



I shall investigate this! Thanks!

On my Thinkpad X1 Carbon with the official Lenovo USB3 dock (using the same Displaylink technology) you could noticeably see some block artifacts whilst playing the flash game Candy Crush on Facebook. I don't have it any more, but that was the only time it was truly noticeable from memory.

Everything else was fine. Even playing video seemed good enough surprisingly although I might have only tried that once or twice. Certainly for all things business you would never have noticed. Even running the Solidworks eDrawing viewer went quite well.

Well, after all that trouble, and moving everything over to USB, it turns out the USB interface is crap and that there is a driver bug that makes USB unworkable for that audio interface. I'm investigating competitor's options now, hopefully they won't have the same driver bug.

http://support.presonus.com/entries/21477544-Is-my-AudioBox-compatible-with-USB-3-0-
http://forums.presonus.com/posts/list/32657.page
http://forums.presonus.com/posts/list/33427.page
http://forums.presonus.com/posts/list/45417.page
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3BPEEMAR9P5TG/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R3BPEEMAR9P5TG

Ended up getting one of these, and I like it so far:
http://tascam.com/product/us-1800/

Not as feature-rich as the Presonus unit, it doesn't have all the software effect bells and whistles, and it doesn't have a software mixer panel with a bunch of routing options. On the other hand, all those things generally just got in my way before, and I kind of like its simplicity. We'll see how it does long-term.