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

[lepetitmartien]

It does As long as you don't need to record a full symphonic orchestra.
Welcome to Firewire

There was some issues years ago (both interface and drive on the same port) but it seems ironed out. In case, you can still use either the interface or the drive in USB 2, it's "less good" but it works well enough for most people.

I'd keep both in firewire, but buy an hard drive with a firewire/USB enclosure so you can keep the interface in firewire and use the drive in USB if Firewire does not. This way you're covered in 99.99% of situations, last is Murphy at large…

[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.

[makaala]

Beware. I have an M-audio firewire 410 interface and for the longest time had issues and had to re-install the driver multiple times... a real pain. Led me to buy an Edirol UA-101 USB (very satisfied). I use the Edirol with Logic 8 and occasionally use the firewire for m-powered pro-tools sessions.
Well... to make a long story short, there are issues using the M-audio FW410 a FW800 drive that is daisy chained with other firewire drives hooked up to it. In an M-audio forum, I stumbled across this incompatibility and problem set that has to do with FW800 drives. see below
Here is the text from the M-Audio support page... at least they are honest.

"Q: Why do I sometimes lose connection to my M-Audio FireWire interface or have audio drop outs when also using a FireWire 800 hard drive?

A: Computers that have both a FireWire 400 and a FireWire 800 port may be sharing the same FireWire bus internally. When using both, the 400 and the 800 port at the same time, you may experience problems like audio drop outs or loss of connection to the M-Audio FireWire interface. There's a variety of possible reasons for this including but not limited to bandwidth limitations, clocking issues (400/800) and bus master problems with the devices connected to both ports. M-Audio recommends using the M-Audio FireWire audio interface on the computers original FireWire port while adding a separate FireWire interface card (with a Texas Instruments chipset) to the system (PCI, PCIe, ExpressCard, or PCMCIA). Connect any third party FireWire 800 devices to the added FireWire interface card.

If your computer does not have expansion slots for a separate FireWire interface card there are 2 possible alternatives:

If your external hard drive has FW400 connectivity, you can daisy chain the hard drive to the 2nd FireWire port* (if available) on your M-Audio Device
If your external hard drive has USB 2.0 connectivity, you can connect the hard drive to a USB 2.0 port on the computer
* Excludes Ozonic, ProjectMix I/O, and ProFire Lightbridge."

The quality of sound from both interfaces is just fine with FW410 having a nicer feature with two headphone outs. Good luck.
Imac 2.66, Dual G5 2.0
Edirol UA-101, M-audio FW410
Logic 8, M-powered Pro-tools 7 +

[arvidtp]

I had a problem of stuttering audio when i had my MOTU ultralite connected via firewire 400 and HD connected via firewire 800 on my old powerbook G4, so i switched the HD over to fw 400 and put it last in the chain and all was fine. But this issue seems completely cleared up with my Jan 2008 macbook pro and I can run the HD on this fw800 port and the Ultralite on the fw400 port just fine (though I assume since they are still the same fw bus, the HD drops to fw 400 speed when the ultralite is on).

[tsuliman]

I was also concerned about the new computer models only having one port and I asked an Apple Store employee and he told me the same thing. That's why I feel lucky to have the older iMac model that has FW800, FW400 and (3) USB. I'm not sure if the ports share a bus, but this is a great machine, so if you can find one used, I highly recommend it. Mine has a 750 GB hard drive which is plenty, and I have an external FW800 hard drive for audio. I'm running a Digi002 via FW400 and I have had no problems. Except for guitar players, but that's another story.

Apparently, all of the computer manufacturers (presumably audio gear too) are awaiting the arrival of USB 3, which might actually be "universal."

[mortalengines]

I was also concerned about the new computer models only having one port and I asked an Apple Store employee and he told me the same thing. That's why I feel lucky to have the older iMac model that has FW800, FW400 and (3) USB. I'm not sure if the ports share a bus, but this is a great machine, so if you can find one used, I highly recommend it. Mine has a 750 GB hard drive which is plenty, and I have an external FW800 hard drive for audio. I'm running a Digi002 via FW400 and I have had no problems. Except for guitar players, but that's another story.

Apparently, all of the computer manufacturers (presumably audio gear too) are awaiting the arrival of USB 3, which might actually be "universal."

I heard something about Apple backpedaling on phasing out the Firewire ports and will be resuming its original offering of a 400 and 800 port on its upcoming models....it may be worth waiting for them- the notion that they were going to abandon a data transfer format which has served them so well for so long (and one that they developed, no less) was absolutely ludicrous. Has anyone heard otherwise?


www.reverbnation.com/mortalengines

[lancet]

.it may be worth waiting for them- the notion that they were going to abandon a data transfer format which has served them so well for so long (and one that they developed, no less) was absolutely ludicrous. Has anyone heard otherwise?


www.reverbnation.com/mortalengines

In so much as Apple never made any public statements regarding they "were going to abandon" Firewire that's just speculation. If anything, they were just differentiating the Pro and consumer lines of laptops by including it in the Pro and not in the consumer machines.

Let's face it, the USB only Macbooks are basically smaller Macbook Pro's sans the firewire. Since then they have dumped the unibody macbook and rolled the 13" size into the Macbook pro family.

It's also worth noting that the current Macbook is the OLD plastic white macbook, solidifying the differentiation (again) between the Pro and consumer lines.

IMHO, including a legacy FW 400 port on future models is unlikely. Since there is only ONE FW bus, and 800 is completely compatible with 400 devices the addition of a port accomplishes nothing more than the proper cables and a Firewire hub would.