Guy At Apple Store Told Me I Can Piggy Back Firewire Devices, The Audio Interface And The External Hardrive..., is this true ? Options

[etadaepar]

Yea i was going to buy the imac but they don't make one with 2 firewire ports one for my audio interface and the other for the audio drive so I don't have to record to my system drive, so i was asking about that and the guy says that's not an issue because firewire devices ckan be "piggy-backed" he said I can do it with the interface/soundcard and the external HD and record onto the hard drive from the audio interface still going through the apple software...?


thanks

This post has been edited by etadaepar: Wed 10 Jun 2009, 06:16

[ghess]

I also have my audio interface and FW HD on the same Firewire bus. It's not ideal, but it works fine. I would caution you against getting one of the combo FW/USB enclosures though. The chipsets with these often have issues and can lead to dropout. The most reliable chipsets are still made by Oxford. Look for an enclosure with the Oxford 911.

[deaconblue]

It will depend on the interface. If you have a newer interface (the last 6 years or so) there should be no problem in piggybacking devices.

However, if you have two FW ports on the audio interface device I'd recommend connecting it to the Mac and the hard drive or other FW device to the interface. This is based upon my experience with a MOTU 828 (original). If I connect it to a FW device and then to the Mac (Hard Drive or FW Hub), the Mac does not see nor interact with the MOTU. If I connect the 828 directly to the CPU, no problems.

As for recording to an external FW HDD, this could yield mixed results as well based upon bus speed, spindle speed, processor load, etc. If you have not purchased the iMac system yet, have you thought about buying a larger internal HDD and then partitioning it so that you have a dedicated "Logical Drive" for your System/Apps and another for your audio/media files from recording?

peace.