multiple firewire devices

[lukirocks]

Hi folks,

I'd like to have a tascam fw1884, but that's a little out of my budget right now. The Presonus Firepod comes with a free headphone amp till the end of the month, so i'm probably gonna go that route.

Here is my question....The tascam 1884 has a couple of firewire ports on the back...

http://www.tascam.com/Products/FW-1884/fw1884_rear.jpg

...In theory, could i later on just run the firepod into the 1884 to chain them together, then monitor everything through the Tascam. I've heard of daisy-chaining 2 firepods together, but i am clueless in this situation. I know that the Tascam accepts adat, so i could sell the firepod later and get an adat unit. Would be nice if this could work though.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Ironklad Audio]

i think most firewire daisy-chaining is only possible by chaining the same units together...like two mackie onyx preamp units, or 2 different MOTU units daisy-chained together

 

[dgatwood]

i think most firewire daisy-chaining is only possible by chaining the same units together...like two mackie onyx preamp units, or 2 different MOTU units daisy-chained together

Nah. Those mechanisms with two of the same kind of device work through driver tricks in which software basically keeps the clocks in sync. It is fraught with problems from what I've read.

IMHO, you're much better with two completely different devices so that the drivers don't know each other are there, then slaving one device to the other via S/PDIF, AES/EBU, ADAT lightpipe, or word clock. Of course, doing this requires that both interfaces have digital audio I/O....

 

[SonicAlbert]

I also think it is possible you need to connect both devices to a fw port on the computer, or to a fw hub. I know that daisy chaining hard drives works, but I'm not sure about two different audio interfaces from two different companies. Pretty sure you'd have better luck connecting both directly to the computer.

 

[tnjazz]

I also think it is possible you need to connect both devices to a fw port on the computer, or to a fw hub. I know that daisy chaining hard drives works, but I'm not sure about two different audio interfaces from two different companies. Pretty sure you'd have better luck connecting both directly to the computer.

This will only work on a Mac, I believe (under core audio aggregate devices)

 

[kojdogg]

a company called centrance has developed a "universal driver" that allows you to chain interfaces from different manufacturers together. the driver currently supports the firepod and a bunch of others, but not the tascam. i read about this on another board, but have no experience with this:
http://www.centrance.com/products/ud/

 

[dgatwood]

This will only work on a Mac, I believe (under core audio aggregate devices)

Aggregate devices should not be needed unless you can't get the two devices in sync for some reason or unless your audio app only supports a single device at a time.

Edit: I didn't realize Windows ASIO was so primitive. It looks like it isn't possible to load multiple audio drivers in ASIO in a single host application, but I've read that you can use ASIO4ALL to support multiple WDM drivers in ASIO.

I'm really shocked that nobody has worked around this yet. Seems like you just should be able to run a helper host in the background that talks to the other drivers through a combination of IPC and shared memory and you're done. Anybody?

Oh, and there's also ASIOX and ASIO2KS.

 

[Minion]

I have used ASIO4All to record from both my Stock sound Card and my Delta 44 at the same time in Mackie Traction 2.1 so It might be possible to run both FW Interfaces at the same time.....

I guess you could Try it and if it don"t work you could return it to the store....