Connecting/chaining FW & USB devices

M

Mo-Kay

Dragon Soul Productions
Hi,

recently, I've been having some new stuff and changed to my setup, and I'm a little bit confused as far as connecting everything goes.

my stuff I need to connect:



-Macbook Pro 2.2 ghz gbb ram 120 gb HDD
; 2X USB 2.0, 1X FW400, 1XFW800, 1X ExpressCard slot

-M-Audio Projectmix I/O audio interface/controller FW400

- Focusrite Liquidmix DSP processor
FW400

-Lacie 500 GB external FW audio drive
FW400/800

-M-audio AXIOM 25 USB keyboard controlle
r USB 1.1

- EMAGIC AMT8 MIDI interface
USB 1.1

-an USB cardreader (for transferring samples to my CF cards for my Akai MPC2000 sampler)

-my Protools Ilok USB dongle




I would like to ask the computer cracks/dataflow/chaining experts (LOL) here:

what would be the best way to connect all this stuff, possibly daisy chaining (how would I do that?), using USB /FW hubs, whatever...

I'm no newbie to audio, no newbie to computers, but this data bandwidth and stuff puzzles me sometimes, so I wanna do this right and not run into all kinds of trouble, since this IS the 1st time I'm dealing with FW devices...

Thnx a ton in advance!


Mo-Kay.
 
Forget about using the LiquidMix on the same FW buss as the HD you're trying to get audio off. Didn't work for me with anything above about 3-4 instances of the plugin :(

I'm probably going to sell mine as a result...
 
Looks like you need a powered USB hub for those devices, since you have more USB peripherals than USB ports.

The HD would go on the FW800 port, but then you are a little bit screwed on the FW400 port.

You might want to see if it works to chain the Project mix off the HD on the FW 800 port. That means the port will function at 400, but it might be possible. That way the Liquid Mix would have the other port to itself.

Or go the FW express card slot route and have a different FW port for each of those devices.

Also, don't hot swap FW ports. Even though you are *supposedly* able to do so according to the spec, this can and potentially will fry your firewire port and/or any firewire devices connected to it. I say this from hard experience.
 
SonicAlbert said:
You might want to see if it works to chain the Project mix off the HD on the FW 800 port. That means the port will function at 400, but it might be possible.
Click to expand...

No, it won't. It will work at 800 Mbps to the HD, 400 Mbps to the Project Mix beyond it. FireWire is not USB. It doesn't slow down to the speed of the slowest device unless the slowest device is hooked up first in the chain.... :)
 
Hey, for whatever it's worth....I have a projectmix and an external FW drive - and I can not use the two together - at all. No matter how I try to chain the two or even just pluggin each one into it's own port, I get all kinds of artifacts and crap if I try to record straight to the drive, and even if I am not recording, but just mixing a session stored on the FW drive through the projectmix, I still get glitches and shit.

I even went so far as to buy some stupidly expensive FW pcmcia card that has the "ideal" Texas Instruments chipset, and it does the same thing....

The laptop that I am using this stuff through does not have any onboard firewire ports, however....so hopefully you'll have better luck with your macbook.
 
TyphoidHippo said:
Hey, for whatever it's worth....I have a projectmix and an external FW drive - and I can not use the two together - at all. No matter how I try to chain the two or even just pluggin each one into it's own port, I get all kinds of artifacts and crap if I try to record straight to the drive, and even if I am not recording, but just mixing a session stored on the FW drive through the projectmix, I still get glitches and shit.
Click to expand...

Assuming the glitches are only on tracks that go through the ProjectMix (try muting those channels and see if the glitches go away), then it sounds like the ProjectMix is doing something dumb, like using bulk transfers instead of isoch.

If the glitches are across all tracks, then your DAW isn't doing enough disk buffering to compensate for the increased latency. Try bumping up the disk buffer size.
 
I had those kinds of glitches with a firewire interface as well, just not the Project Mix. The solution is to get an interface that works with whatever particular computer you are using. One interface will not work properly with other peripherals and the next one will. It shouldn't be that way, but it is.
 
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