Firewire I/O and the new dual-cores...

willtompkins · Post by **willtompkins** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 5:00 pm

Hello everybody,

Man, it's been a long time since I've been on here (moving twice, once from Canada to US, building home studio, etc.). Anyway, I've got a few concerns, as I'm sure some of you do, about getting I/O with the new dual-core Macs (at least as an immediate/temporary solution).

First though, considering that I've been waiting for these Macs for at least a solid 6 months, I cannot express to you how relieved/excited I am to finally see their inception. But with this comes my impatience to wait around any longer. My dual 1ghz G4 hasn't been "cutting" it for quite some time, forcing to hold off my elaborate surround projects up until now. I plan to order the new quad within 3-4 weeks (small leeway for any immediate software and/or hardware updates from companies, and time for first shipments to arrive); risk taken. So in doing this, I NEED I/O and the only viable option appearing for quite some time will be firewire. Hopefully I am proven wrong within the next few weeks, but for now, this seems to be my only option if I plan to actually start using the machine in a month or so. If need be, I can always sell the firewire hardware when the PCI-E stuff comes out.

I guess what I'm getting at is your guys' experiences with firewire I/O, particularly Motu stuff. Stability? Reliability? Performance? I plan on using ~20 I/O (analog line/ADAT) on most likely the 828mkII which is nearly the capabilities of the unit. From what I understand firewire can handle at least 32 I/O on one buss, which would leave plenty of bandwidth open. But what about performance with 2 or 3 units chained together (something I'm considering) incorporated into high track-count surround projects?

Any and all info/thoughts/comments related to this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for the time.

mastermix · Post by **mastermix** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 7:09 pm

I would not recommend daisy-chaining firewire devices like hard drives with firwewire audio interfaces -- even with the FW 800....as the bus bandwidth has limitations. May be okay to chain audio interfaces on the FW 800 bus but difinitely not the FW 400. MOTU lacks a FW 800 audio interface..
Something could be in the works..

Best to buy a PCI Express firewire card to run the 'other' devices.

Kris..

mastermix · Post by **mastermix** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 8:01 pm

My memory is fuzzy on this one -- but I believe the FW 400 and FW 800 are on the same physical bus in the currrent architecture -- which makes matters worse.

This bus bandwidth limitation makes the need for PCI E firewire card more important...if one is to avoid hiccups.

Kris..

Burnie M · Post by **Burnie M** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 3:55 am

I currently run 3x 828's on one fw 400 bus geting 24 channels in. I have on 2 occaisions hired an apogee ad16 to get 40 simultaneous ins at 24bit/48k. Ad16 running off 2x optical adat ports. HD on a seperate fw bus. Both systems run flawlessly.

kgdrum · Post by **kgdrum** » Thu Oct 20, 2005 7:12 pm

i am planning to buy quad as well in the next few weeks,i always keep my
i/o(RME fireface,used to have 896)on it's own bus ,i intend to utilize pci ex firewire card for fw drives,i am confident they will pop up in the next few weeks....... there are pci ex sata solutions on the horizon as well
my approach for set up will be as follows
1)boot drive
2)samples(internal 2nd drive)
3)audio(external pci ex >sata)3 rd drive
4)backup(pci ex >fw card
for me this approach has made my dual 1 gig somewhat useable,so i want to take the same approach,in my experience fw devices should not share the same bus