G
gamba
Member
hi. right now i am looking to upgrade my m audio fast track pro to a 8 channel firewire interface. reason being is that i would like to utilize the direct outs of my roland td20 {expanded}.right now my project studio consist of a mid 2010 27" imac with a 2.8 ghz intel core i5 and 4gb ram. also i am using a lacie d2 quadra external drive that has usb 2.0, eSATA, firewire 400 and firewire 800 outputs. because my mac only has one firewire 800 input, that is what i am connecting the external drive on. on the external drive i have my backups, 2.5 gb of loops, native instruments komplete 7 elements, and fxpansions bfd2. now finally to my questions. when i read the saffire pro 40 maual online they said this: Firewire considerations - Most computers will generally be equipped with 1 Firewire bus. You may have multiple Firewire ports (connectors) on your computer, but these are all connected to 1 physical chip which controls the bus.
The Firewire chip is limited in the amount of data bandwidth it can handle, so the more Firewire devices connected to the Firewire bus, the more data the bus needs to handle, and the greater chance there is of having more data than can be dealt with.
The Saffire PRO 40 should be able to work along side other devices connected to the same Firewire bus. However whether this will work for you will depend on what other Firewire devices are connected, and what they are doing. For example a Firewire disk used for back-up or a digital camera should not cause any problems; but when using a Firewire hard disk that is streaming all your samples, or a Firewire DSP box such as Focusrite Liquid Mix, (i.e. when there is a lot of data streaming on the Firewire bus,) there is a chance that more data is streamed than the Firewire chip can handle. This will result in audio drop outs, or reduced performance on either the Saffire PRO 40 or the other connected Firewire device.
For this reason, we would recommend that you use a separate Firewire bus for each Firewire device. This may be a PCI / PCIe card in your desktop, or a PCMCIA or Express card in your Laptop.
i dont think that i can get a separate firewire bus for an imac. so my two questions would be 1: if this would work or would i have major problems like they mentioned. 2: is if i did purchase this would it be hooked up going from external drive to interface to computer or interface to external drive to computer. thanks a million for even taking the time to read this. i just dont have the 500 or so dollars right now to spend on something that is just going to give me problem after problem. thanks again.
The Firewire chip is limited in the amount of data bandwidth it can handle, so the more Firewire devices connected to the Firewire bus, the more data the bus needs to handle, and the greater chance there is of having more data than can be dealt with.
The Saffire PRO 40 should be able to work along side other devices connected to the same Firewire bus. However whether this will work for you will depend on what other Firewire devices are connected, and what they are doing. For example a Firewire disk used for back-up or a digital camera should not cause any problems; but when using a Firewire hard disk that is streaming all your samples, or a Firewire DSP box such as Focusrite Liquid Mix, (i.e. when there is a lot of data streaming on the Firewire bus,) there is a chance that more data is streamed than the Firewire chip can handle. This will result in audio drop outs, or reduced performance on either the Saffire PRO 40 or the other connected Firewire device.
For this reason, we would recommend that you use a separate Firewire bus for each Firewire device. This may be a PCI / PCIe card in your desktop, or a PCMCIA or Express card in your Laptop.
i dont think that i can get a separate firewire bus for an imac. so my two questions would be 1: if this would work or would i have major problems like they mentioned. 2: is if i did purchase this would it be hooked up going from external drive to interface to computer or interface to external drive to computer. thanks a million for even taking the time to read this. i just dont have the 500 or so dollars right now to spend on something that is just going to give me problem after problem. thanks again.