hunderbolt fulfills the promise of a truly state-of-the-art connectivity standard for personal computers. With massive bandwidth, Thunderbolt allows you to connect displays, hard drives, and other peripherals to your computer, along with the 828x, up to six devices total (with the 828x at the end of the chain), and the Thunderbolt bus won't even break a sweat. Thunderbolt combines plug-and-play convenience with massive bandwidth and low latency for truly professional audio interface performance.
Used Input and Output Processors
Input/output processors are used for multichannel sound recording in real time. Capable of studio-grade fidelity, these specialized soundcards are used in professional sound engineering and make use of an audio stream input output protocol.
These kinds of I/O audio processor soundcards are fitted with multiple input and output connections, usually USB, FireWire or some kind of optical interface so that a larger amount of data can be carried than with a normal sound card. Input/output processors also emphasize higher fidelity and sampling rates, as they are intended for real-time audio mixing and multi-channel recording.
Due to their highly specialized nature, input/output processors are not considered practical for home users, as they lack certain features common in consumer soundcards, such as real-time ambience effects, environmental audio extensions and the ability to accelerate hardware in video games, as these are considered to be undesirable.
Input/output processors feature a specially designed protocol that is capable of handling numerous inputs and outputs for audio, as consumer soundcards have a sampling latency that is comparatively large, and therefore unsuitable for professional applications. Consumer soundcards simply take too long to convert and transfer a sound sample to the hard drive of a computer, and they are also limited in the amount of bit depths and effective sampling rates they can process. Input/output processors typically have multiple channels, rather than just the two provided on most consumer soundcards, and there connectors are more accessible.