External Hard Drives, Do I really need Glyph? Options

[Synthetic]

Now, let's say you've got 10 Gb free on the internal drive. With that, you can go out without your external drive and record 7 hours of 2-track, or nearly 2 hours of 8-track. You can then come back and put it on your external and go out and start again.

Presto... i think you are missing the point here... the point is to avoid using the internal HD for recording purposes if at all possible because it's not really best suited for A/V work and its best not to use the same drive for recording that also is running your system and software. Yes it will work and you can do exactly what you described but for best results... an external drive (like the ones mentioned in the many numerous previous posts) will provide longer life and better quality overall.

My example... even though I have room on my Tibook HD to record... i avoid this and rely on using my Glyph Project X firewire drive for recording. If I must travel... its not big deal to bring it along since its not that big (bigger than the Mbox companion maybe) and its great being able to share it with my G3 desktop model at home. Before the Glyph, I relied on a SCSI card and a Lacie Tsunami 9gig drive for my recordings until it developed a bad sector and went to trash. I had tried recording on the internal 6gig drive that was in G3 when I first got the Digi001 and noticed that some recordings seemed to have minor skips or "hicups" in the some tracks especially if I tried to record 24bit.

[damann]

regarding that last quote.
don't use your internal hd for audio recording/playback if it is the drive you boot your daw from!
try to keep one third of the available space on your boot drive available.
regularly optimize a regularly USED audio drive.
backup regularly...

[Presto]

"...noticed that some recordings seemed to have minor skips or "hicups" in some tracks"

Thanks Synthetic. I've often heard not to use the internal drive for audio, but never been told why. I haven't therefore taken the warnings seriously. Haven't noticed the hiccup/skip problem yet, but then I've not much experience either. For the moment I just trash what I don't like.

"don't use your internal hd for audio recording/playback if it is the drive you boot your daw from! try to keep one third of the available space on your boot drive available.
regularly optimize a regularly USED audio drive
backup regularly... 8-)"

Thanks for advice Damann too. I may follow it ;-) Any more info on why? Perhaps 1 or 2 track recording doesn't lead to the problems encountered with 8-tracks.

Concerning 800Mb/sec FW, I wonder how many Mb/sec small projects really need.

[Synthetic]

sometimes its hard to just look at some stats to determine performance of a system because often there are many variables that are not accounted for and hard to forsee unless you are an electronic engineer... so sometimes you just have to rely on the old trial-and-error method.

a good example is the use of USB for audio recording which many claimed was worthless for multitrack recording especially at high bit rates but most of the tests I have read about the new USB audio interfaces like the emagic models and tascam claim good recording quality even on internal drives so you never know. When it comes down to it... it just depends on how important quality is and what price you are willing to pay for it. Heck, I remember reading article about an older Eurythmics album that was a big hit and it was recorded on 8 track analog without big studio. Maybe sometimes the material itself is more important than how it was recorded

[rickenbacker]

Synthetic has got it exactly right - home recordists can produce some excellent work. It's probably not going to compete with a Shania Twain or Jamiroquai album, even if they are using the same software (I know Jay Kay used Logic Platinum to record his last album), but it's still going to sound pretty good. A lot of the early house records - and I'm talking massive global hits, here - were recorded on 4-track machines and mastered from cassette. This was the early '90s, too - not the '70s! So anything you can do on a modern Mac has the potential to sound fantastic.

I've tried quite a few of the new USB interfaces (Mbox, both Tascam 428 and 224, Edirol UA-5 and UA-700, Swissonic Studio-D) and - in my opinion, for what it's worth - they're all fine for audio work. As Joe Meek said, if it sounds right, it IS right. And he was recording vocals on the staircase of his flat on the Holloway Road in London.

As for the new high-speed FireWire, talking to a friend who works on a Mac magazine here in the UK, he's not heard about any new products featuring 1394b due for release in the next few months. So if you need a FireWire drive now, you might as well get one rather than hang about waiting. Current FireWire speeds are still pretty nippy.

[fromage]

Pardon the warming-up of leftovers from the back of the fridge, fellas -- looks like this topic's been dormant for a couple months. I thought it might be nice, though, in my first post here to share some (hopefully) useful information I've found, and possibly get an answer to my question. I couldn't find any recent updated thorough info on this as of last week, so I did a little digging myself.

Of the pros I spoke with who are currently either using or building their Mac-based digital home studios, most are saying the same things, which are as follows.

First off, FireWire external drives are the most popular choice. They're easy to implement, cheap, fast, and reliable.

Two main components are to be considered in the process of shopping for an external FireWire drive: The IDE drive itself, and the "box" within which it resides.

The drive's size is somewhat important-- those that have a 40GB or smaller all say they wish they'd paid the extra cash for an 80GB; those with 80GB or higher are happy.
The drive's SPEED is more important-- all recommend 7200rpm drives. Also, if you can get it already formatted for Mac, that's even better, as the formatting process can be a bit weird over FireWire...? I don't know enough about this. More digging for another future post, perhaps.

Now for the box-- the most important features (in order) are the chipset, case material, and items inside the case other than the chipset and drive. Consistently the Oxford 911 chipset was recommended. Aluminum is the case material of choice because of its heat-dissipating qualities. And fans, even "quiet" ones, are generally avoided (and not really needed with aluminum cases anyway). Also, if you can get a case with an external power supply, this reduces the heat in the case even more (though it might add another "wall wart" AC Power Adaptor to your setup-- blechh!!).

With that in mind... You can buy an ideal drive (80GB, 7200RPM) for well under $100 US dollars, and a good case (Oxford 911 chipset, aluminum case, no fan, external power supply) for around $50 through the right auction.

One thing I didn't even think to ask of the people I spoke to (and they didn't mention it, so maybe it's not a big deal?) was the cache size -- 2MB is common, 8MB is possible but not as readily available. ANYONE, do you know if this is a concern?

FYI www.eshop.macsales.com has a pretty decent deal going right now-- one of their setups is for a 100GB drive with the 8MB cache and all the other good things mentioned above, plus a 2yr warranty, for around $275. Still think dropping $400 on a comparable Glyph drive is worth it?

Cheers, all -- and if you find out about that whole cache conundrum, fill me in, k?

[Presto]

I've just got an 80Gb MacWay FW Icebox. It's got 512Kb of Flash memory but I don't know what that means.

My local dealer has had to order a memory chip for my old imac 233 which I'll be using for non musical apps. So later this week I'll probably be able to let you know if PTLE/Mbox works alright with it.

I was hoping I wouldn't have to hide it somewhere, as it has no fan. Hum!! It makes a hell of a noise compared to my ibook.

[Levon River]

If I've posted this before, it bears repeating.

My experience with the OWC Mercury Elite series has been excellent, and I recommend that anyone shopping for an external firewire drive at least take a look at these in yer comparison shopping:

http://eshop.macsales.com/Catalog_Page.cfm...e=FW&Template=1

The Elite cases are pretty handsome, too, housed in clear plastic, ala G4s, with a smart blue power light that can double as a nightlight.

The pictures on the page don't do it justice. It's also quiet.

OWC sells the parts for rolling your own external firewire drive if you prefer to go that route, but with the Elites, they've done the work. Worth a look.

[Presto]

Had a look - as far as I can see and read its the same as the Ice including the nice blue light (it is nice)

[Teiwaz]

Hmmm...I know this is an old thread, but I must say it does tickle me to read that some mac musicians had been wondering why they had problems recording/playing back audio when they had been using their internal BOOT drive as their AUDIO drive....

The mac is continuously accessing the system drive for system related read/write to/from memory instructions, and I feel that it ought to be common knowledge that it is definitely not the place to be recording/playing back audio from/to!! It's no wonder users get 'interruptions' in their recordings...the system drive is already busy dealing with the...er...SYSTEM!

I have always had a separate drive for audio...even back in 1996 when drives were not that fast (the problems even more obvious back then.)

I can see it now...the audio drive is completely "free from traffic" on it's I/O ribbon cable, whereas there is always a stream of data moving up & down the system drive's I/O ribbon cable..er...ho hum