my start

[swayofpendulums]

So the other day I ordered a M-Audio firewire 1814 to get my little personal basement studio started. I intend on picking up protools m-powered 7, and a condenser microphone (maybe a few more down the road) in the near future. I plan on doing mainly guitar/bass recording, and some vocal recording as well. I'm not sure about drum recording as of yet...

I've read a few articles on the web about this kind of thing and from what I've read it seems like an external harddrive would also be a good idea.

Now specifically with my firewire 1814, i have a few questions. I've had a hard time finding any pictures of what this device looks like when completely rigged up to a computer. I understand that it connects via firewire (which i'm going to pick up a firewire card for), but i'm somewhat baffled as to all the other connections such as S/PDIF and ADAT light pipe. Where do I plug these in?

Long story short, I'd like to have a more specific list of necessities in order for me to get my firewire 1814 up and running, and perhaps a few ideas for things to pick up in the future.

thanks,

Joe

EDIT: I forgot to mention, I will be using a a solid PC with my firewire 1814 and protools.

[Kevin Deschwazi]

Hello Joe

s/pdif is a digital in/out protocol, so unless you have some digital hardware you want to hook up then you can ignore it.

ADAT lightpipe allows you to add a further 8 channels of AD to your setup. Again, assuming this isn't something you're thinking of doing at the moment then you can ignore that one too.

It should just be a case of 1 fw cable between interface and comp and then all of your audio lines going into the interface. Easy peasy! You could download the manual from the M Audio site and it should give you an idea of how it all gets hooked up:

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=support.manuals

I advise that you read up on acoustics and pay a bit of attention to the acoustic properties of your recording/listening environments, these are really important in achieving good quality recordings. Decent monitoring is esential too.

Here's a fantastic acoustics primer:

http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html

And can I suggest you get a fw card with a TI chipset? Other types (such as Vaio) are reported to be a bit glitchy with fw audio interfaces. I use an Adaptec fireconnect and it works like a dream.