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ata vs firewire

Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 5:28 am
by jopeydrummer
I was using a Glyph X project 30 gig drive as my recording drive but was having a lot of issues with the audio performance in DP. I bought an internal maxtor 7200rpm/8mb/120 gig and put in a sonnet ata 133controller card. I only get the occasional performance hiccup (that's what I call it when my clients see it). Is there any reason I should not use an internal drive to record to? This is a seperate drive from my system drive. I actually loved the Maxtor so much I went back and replaced my original system drive with one too. I use my firewire bus for my 828mkii and my Tascam 1102 controller and even with a seperate firewire card it seems like there was a bottleneck there. Thanks for your input.

Re: ata vs firewire

Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 5:46 am
by quaver
Normalizing DOES decrease the signal to noise ratio. when you change the level in a digital system you DOUBLE the quantization noise.

Now if you use Trim and add 10db you are bringing the noise floor up 3db. But when you change your mind and back tghe trimn off 2 db the signal is not degraded further. When you normalise the clip you add the 3db noise, but when you decide its too loud and take it back 2db you add anoth 3db quantisation noise so you are bewhind 3 db.

now there is a caveat: if you bring the level up one entire bit then you do not introduce any noise at all! Sound Consulting has a (vst) plugin that does just this adds gain in something like 3.06db increments.

btw anyh gain changing process (limiter compressor etc) will add quantization noise ... detail (quantization noise is very very low but accumulates as we screw around so take care!

Re: ata vs firewire

Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 5:47 am
by quaver
sorry wrong threrad !

Re: ata vs firewire

Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 2:14 pm
by sndhse
Hey jopey.
Go for it. There is no reason to not do what you've suggested. Throw another drive into the internal bay. I have 5 drives. D2 Lacie firewire x2(160GB each) Glyph wildfire ultrawide SCSI and 2 internal drives. 40GB western digital and 120 GB maxtor. They all live very happy together. I'm still a firm believer that SCSI and especially ULTRA WIDE SCSI drives are still #1 for transfer rates.
www.soundhousestudio.com

Re: ata vs firewire

Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 3:05 pm
by jopeydrummer
Thanks Sndhse....I was thinking of going SCSI but figured id see if this will meet my needs for now.

Re: ata vs firewire

Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 5:05 pm
by sndhse
Glad I could help. Here's food for thought.
Ultra wide SCSI's transfer rates are still the fastest out there. Yes even faster than FW800.

Re: ata vs firewire

Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2005 2:11 am
by glmusic
Not only is SCSI faster, the drives tend to be more robust in terms of reliability because most are used in servers which run 24/7. The other advantage is that SCSI is the only format which can read and write simultaneously. I don't know any other format which can do that. Not that it matters that much for audio work, but for every day file transfers and general speed, it does make a difference. Put your system on a SCSI disk, not just your audio files, and you will see a significant performance gain.