Data communication method

Abstract

It is an object of the present invention to reduce the number of terminals in an equipment for inputting or outputting a realtime digital signal such as a digital audio signal and a music/musical instrument signal. A first converter and a second converter are provided with a function of mutual conversion between a signal format of a digital audio interface and a signal format of IEEE-1394. For example, it is possible to transmit a signal of a digital audio interface outputted from a first CD player to the first converter, to convert the signal here into a packet of IEEE-1394 isochronous transmission format and transmit it to the second converter, and to return the packet to the digital audio interface and record a digital audio signal in an MD recorder. When a converter having a function of mutual conversion between the MIDI signal format and the IEEE-1394 signal format is provided, it is also possible to perform bidirectional data communication among a plurality of MIDI musical instruments.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.