Firebox Or Traveller, Help me choose my new interface Options

[minskybabs]

Hi all,
I currently use 2 Macs a Powermac G4 tower 466 (Digital Audio) with 512Mb Ram and running OS9.1 and a 15" Alu Powerbook 1.25Ghz w 512MB Ram running OS10.3.9.

I use logic platinum 4.8.1 on the powermac tower with a Audiowork 2 sound card. and don't use the laptop for music much except itunes and a bit of garageband.

I am thinking of upgrading the powermac and powerbook to tiger, and buying a new soundcard to use logic on both, I guess I will upgrade to logic 7.2 as well.

I like the look of the Presonus Firebox, or the MOTU traveller or 828 mk2 but can't decide between them, I want to be able to use with both machines.

Will this be possible, the tower is below the minimum spec for the presonus, but I only normally record one or two tracks at once.

I hope to be able to get rid of my mixer (soundcraft F1) and use the interface as the mixer, as due to impending birth of number 1 son I have now got space issues!!

Any ideas, will they work with both machines etc.?

Thanks a lot,
Minskybabs

[GitGeezer]

Interesting, I answered this question for myself several months ago.

I had problems (pops, hangs, no SPDIF I/O) with the Firebox on my Powerbook 667 so I returned the Firebox and bought the Traveler. The Traveler worked much better, but now on my current system (I haven't tried SPDIF I/O yet) I have to toggle the optical input settings after booting to "wake up" audio output. Still no definitive word from MOTU (they suggested the output toggle exercise) on a real fix, but at least now once it's "awake" it works until the computer is power-cycled again.

As you can see from my sig I moved up to a Quad G5 from the Powerbook. I'm in this seriously, so I seriously abused my retirement savings. So far I haven't regretted it. Logic 7.1 is actually easy to use on this system, and Reaktor 5 may occaisionally make some (unintended) strange digital-lockup noises, but the CPU is still less than 35%. The funny part was I thought the lock-up was part of the Reaktor patch I was using so I recorded it. I didn't know it until I looked at the waveform in Logic. So much for my 30 years of synthesis experience...

I don't currently daisy-chain a FW drive from the Traveler, but I did on the Powerbook and it worked as a recording target drive. I do use FW400 drives on the Quad G5, but I intend to get a FW800 drive for recorded sound files. I've been told that the FW800 bus is independent of the FW400 bus (which is used by the Traveler) so I'm expecting pretty good performance.

Stay tuned...