Using Firewire on a HP Laptop for multichannel audio recording

Question

While firewire is stil the standard for realtime full duplex multichannel audiorecording (see also current interfaces at Steinberg, Focusrite etc) it seems impossible to buy anything portable besides an Apple laptop. Not because firewire is not available (although less and less!), but mainly because the only thrustworthy firewire-cards seems to have Texas Instruments chipsets. So we search for specs of chipsets on the firewirecard, buy that card to be sure that we will not have crackles, hickups and other distortions during recordingsessions. In fact we are not certain, until we tried the configuration. Because we don't know what to look for. In PC-world, nothing seems to be sure.
Tranferrates are expressed in amount of data within a cetrain period, usualy a second. It does not matter if a chipset is buffering during the transfer or has a tiny hickup. The only thing that matters is the amount of time needed for that amount of data. In realtime audio- and video we need a guaranteed bandwidth for every moment. Always. A stereo-audio-cd is already using 88,200 16bit 'events' a second, without the correctiondata. Recording is about much more. Is there something to read about guaranteed bandwith in specs of interfaces, drives or cards?
Don't underestimate the bandwidth needed here, this is not about some mp3-radiostreams  of 64kb. This is about uncompressed audio, daisychaining firewire interfaces to 24 tracks full duplex for a nice amount, using 24 or 32 bits  resolution and 192kHz sample rates are today's standards. Oh yes, and of course you play and record while listening to the other routed audio streams, using plugin-effects and plugin-soundsynthesis at the same time. Without any interruption. 
Besides those who want to record complete live playing band at once, also smaller 1-8 pre-amp channel interfaces are using firewire or thunderbolt, like the Focusrite's Saffire Pro 14.  It seems that USB is nice, but if you want to have the real stuff, like recording more channels with higher samplerates and just the better preamps, you'll have to  go firewire or thunderbolt. There are USB-interfaces available, but they go up to 8 mic-channels max. It is still unclear how to get to 24 channels with USB by combining interfaces and using USB3. Also because this realtime data-transfer has to be processed by the CPU while using USB, which is also busy with complex reverb calculations and trying to keep the latency (difference in time  between what you play and what your hear) as low as possible.
While the world is getting used to portable computers more and more, every day more (young) musicians are able to buy decent microphones and preamps, step by step building up there own homestudio.  And while there are people  recording with tablets already (although very limited), the laptopsellers seem not to have any clou that there is a need for something portable that can record with these firewire audiointerfaces.
Because spec-given firewire transfer-rates are no garantee that your realtime streaming transfer will be without problems, it would be very nice if HP could point us something like a laptop (serie) equipped with firewireports that we can trust and is able to transfer audio and video livestreams to our DAWs or DVWs.
Maybe HP laptops are already capable of doing this. We haven't got a clou, because we don't know what it is that we should look for besides the TI-chipset. If  somebody at HP give us some info about this, it would be great.
- Are the HP laptops with firewire capable of recording with  audiointerface up to a useful .. say 24 channels full duplex ? (you can daisychain firewire audio interfaces).
-  If we are not sure, are there HP laptops with TI-chipsets? And that is always doing the job?
Dear HP; if you have a laptop that is capable of doing this, prepare for a run on these.  Most people have to buy an Apple now, because they don't know better or there is no knowlegde available.
Firewire is still the standard in audiorecording. Check for example the interfaces on:
http://www.steinberg.net/
http://global.focusrite.com/

Answer 1

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