digital to firewire

[dwillis45]

I’ve been recording for some time with an original MOTU 828. Over the years, I’ve added bits and pieces to work around the internal preamps and converters. These upgrades include a Great River preamp and a Lucid AD 9624. This month I’m going to add either a Benchmark or Lucid DA converter.

After all this upgrading, I suddenly realized that my MOTU is now nothing but an expensive digital (SPDIF/TOSLINK) to firewire adapter. That got me thinking. Does anyone manufacture such a device? I know the new Apogee units have firewire cards that link their converters directly to a computer. Is there anything else? I'm not trying to replace my 828 but I worry about it's eventual demise. I also wonder (if the 828 fails) could grab any cheap firewire interface with a digital IN/OUT and get the same results. Or is the digital-to-firewire routing process more complex than that and subject to variations in quality. Ant thoughts?

 

[Altaire]

ill buy your motu, you tryin to get rid of it?

 

[dwillis45]

ill buy your motu, you tryin to get rid of it?

No. Then I'de be asking a real question instead of the hypothetical post above.

I'm just curious about the digital to firewire link. Firewire transmits digital signals as do SPDIF and TOSLINK. But what does it take to go from SPDIF/TOSLINK to firewire? Is the component critical? Or is the link so simple that I'm overthinking the whole issue? If you use external converters and preamps and your signal is routed digitally to a firewire interface, does it matter if you use an M-Audio Solo ($199) or a Metric Halo ($1,200)?

I realize that some would see this as irrelevant minutae, but what the hell! This forum is built on a foundation of seemingly insignificant details! At any rate, it's not critical right now. I'm just thinking ahead and anticipating what to do if and when my first generation 828 gives out. It's also just intellectual curiosity. I wouldn't have given it a thought except Firewire is my only alternative in terms of a computer connection. (My i-Mac G5 does not have an available PCI slot.) And it just strikes me as odd that through a series of upgrades I've reduced my firewire interface to little more than a fancy adapter.

The other issue that struck me today is that the inteface does somewhat more than simple AD/DA conversion and preamping (if that's even a word!). I'm not that well versed on the internal workings of the 828, but I believe it also provides a hardware mechanism for latency reduction. If that's the case, then it would seem that my old MOTU is not completely useless. On the other hand, when I bypass the internal converters and designate TOSLINK inputs in my software (Digital Performer), I experience some additional latency and I end up reducing the buffer settings to compensate. This suggests to me that the 828 hardware is not being used to address latency issues.

Any one have any input on this?