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I'm planning to buy a computer and a firewire audio interface to make some on site orchestral recording. ¿Does anyone know if a new mac book with 1Gig of ram, a MOTU 8Pre can record at 24/96 without glitches for opera acts like 1 hour and a half steady?¿Can I use an usb2 external hard drive?(the only forewire is used by the motu)

Thanks in advance for the help!!

Javier Gimenez-Zapiola
Buenos Aires, Argentina

It should be fine even with the internal drive IMHO. you can daisy chain a FW HD and the interface no problem as well

Hey Javitoya

Did you try it out? I was running DP 4.6 on a G4 Powerbook with 512MB of RAM and MOTU Traveler. I have recorded up to 8 tracks at the same time without hassle and that was pushing it given my RAM. I've just bought the Macbook (Intel) and will be running a test (1GB). I would like to know your results if you have tried it already though.


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Yes, it will work just fine---depending on the hard-drive, I'm not a fan of USB for audio.

I'm anti-USB for large files period. USB is a burst speed, meaning it can send one burst up to 480Mb/s (Megabits, not bytes, and that's version 2.0) and then another and another, but it cannot keep a constant 480. If you're going to be doing any major bandwidth usage, firewire/ieee1394 (whatever you wanna call it) is a must. There's a reason that there are so few high end USB interfaces...if any? I'm sure Brad can correct me on that.

AGREED... on paper, USB2 is better than Firewire400 but in reality, it's NOT as good for streaming.

even better than firewire 400 and usb 2.0 is esata at 1.5Gb/s. You can get a sata card for a laptop (pcmcia) or a pci sata card

awinn002 wrote:even better than firewire 400 and usb 2.0 is esata at 1.5Gb/s. You can get a sata card for a laptop (pcmcia) or a pci sata card

This would be a good idea with a "Macbook Pro" but unfortunately the "Macbook" does not have an express 34 slot (and PCMIA is no longer built in any Macs).

I also agree with the others about USB 2.0... USB requires more processor arbitration than Firewire does... thus more load on the CPU. Another very important thing to keep in mind is that not all Firewire interfaces will play nicely with a FW drive on the same port. In many cases the only option with the Macbook or an iMac is to record to the internal drive, this may work fine if it is a fast enough drive. If you have the money a "Macbook Pro" is a much better choice for audio or video, but it is about twice the price.

If you don't need 8 channels, perhaps a USB audio interface would be a better choice.

Another consideration - 96K isn't going to help your sound quality when you're using cheap preamps. You'll just have cheap sound at 96K.

Have you checked out some of the dedicated 2 track mini-recorders? If you could find one with a big enough storage medium, that might be a better way to go. Or a used Alesis HD24. They're bullet-proof. The HD24XR has better convertors, and 96K capability, but you'd still need an external preamp with a +4 output to go to the HD24 line inputs.

Thanks everyone for your help!!

I think I will go for the macbook since the hard drive on the macbook pro aren't faster or better than the drives in the macbook pro. Regarding preamps...¿Are motu's preamps that bad? I don't think that the mics I willl use are better...unless anyone knows a 4 Preamp firewire unit that will make the job better.
Any help will be great.

Thanks!