firewire
Home > Home Recording Forum > Recording Techniques > firewire
Posted on Feb 21, 2010 10:24 am
Nate Mc.
Formally Hydrial69
Member Since: May 06, 2009
so i found a 002 for cheap, and i may get it, but my mac has only 1 fire wire port, and i already use that for my external HDD.
so is it dumb to use a firewire hub or splitter to give me more than the one firewire port? i was just worried about the quality and transfer rate while doing that etc
[ Back to Top ]
TadpuiI am not a crook's headMember
Since: Mar 14, 2003
Feb 21, 2010 02:14 pm I'm not sure if this works for Macs the same way it works for PCs, but can you just get a PCI card (or whatever the standard internal card slot type is for Macs) that has a FireWire port on it? That way you get a whole new pathway onto the bus and don't have to split the bandwidth of your existing FW port. I'd think that splitting it would be risky in that the demands of both an audio interface and an external hard drive could easily overrun the bandwidth of a single FW port. I think it'd be safer to just install a new FW port on the computer instead. For PCs, PCI or PCIe FireWire (or IEEE 1394 as its known in PC-land) card is super cheap, like $20 or less.
Nate Mc.Formally Hydrial69Member
Since: May 06, 2009
Feb 21, 2010 06:53 pm problem is its a laptop haha, so cant realy modify it, and if im getting a 002 for protools, i;d want to record to my external HDD cuz i bought one that could be recorded to, lol
Noize2uCzar of MidiAdministrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002
Feb 21, 2010 07:21 pm Hubs are not a good idea for anything like that. You could contact Digidesign and see if they support using an external hub, but I know in past experience they do not function properly when hooked up to a hub.
Feb 21, 2010 07:37 pm Replace the drive with a USB. Most of my FW drives are either/or for that matter....
Nate Mc.Formally Hydrial69Member
Since: May 06, 2009
Feb 21, 2010 10:29 pm well you need a firewire drive to record to in protools i thought?
Feb 21, 2010 11:03 pm I couldn't imagine why...
That said, I'm not a PT guy. But I wouldn't be aware of any such --- uh... Well, I suppose we're talking about PT here, so I wouldn't be shocked either.
Still - Can't imagine it.
CptTrippsCzar of Turd PolishMember
Since: Jun 20, 2006
Feb 22, 2010 12:20 pm PT should not care what interface the data drive uses. USB should work fine.
Noize2uCzar of MidiAdministrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002
Feb 22, 2010 10:21 pm You need a firewire drive if the salesman tells you you do. Or someone who doesn't know jack about recording tells you.
You can use USB or any freakin' drive for that matter. PT does not know the difference, its all a hard drive.
Feb 22, 2010 10:46 pm I have to say that I don't know if it cares or not weather it's a USB of Firewire drive.
But, I do know that PT does not like any external drive.
It limits the amount of data coming from the 002.
We have a Digi Profile with HD cards at my shop. And we bought a Dell with Quad core in it to record PT live tracks.
On the external drive, we can not record over 16 tracks at 48K. The recording gets choppy at that point.
Digi has it on their website, that PT should be used on an internal non partitioned drive for best results.
I don't know how many tracks that your recording at one time. But I think if you cut down on the number of tracks, you can increase the sample rate and record to an external drive. Be it USB or Firewire.
