Firewire/MOTU 828

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jamie Jukosky
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Jamie Jukosky

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I'm wondering just how good firewire is? I've got a pentium 800 laptop and a mackie 1604 vlz pro mixer. I was thinking about getting the MOTU 828 and possibly a firewire hard drive. I'm mainly interested in recording small rock groups. I thought this would be cool because I can use the 828 with any desktop equipped with firewire as well. The metric halo interface is a lot more expensive but may be more upgradeable in the future (especially with firewire 2 protocols coming out). I was just wondering if any body has a good working laptop setup and what their thoughts are on these products.
-Jamie
 
If you're talking about the IEEE 1394 interface (Firewire) then, I have to say that I'm using it on one of my PCs to drive my Nikon 4000ED Coolscan film/slide-scanner, and my Yamaha CD burner, and I've found it to work really well. It's easy to set up, and not as finicky as SCSI (but I don't think it's quite as fast as SCSI - I may be wrong, perhaps I should look at the specs...). It's much more flexible than IDE and can be "hot-swapped" without any problems, and it's much much faster than USB.

Hope this answers your question...

- Wil
 
Another option is the RME DSP system. This uses firewire, but between the breakout box and a proprietary card (pcmcia for laptops, pci for pcs -- doesn't plug into afirewire port). It runs a little more than the 828 (probably $1050 if you buy both the pc and laptop cards, $900 with either card). I had ordered it then had to cancel b/c they were delayed in shipping. If nothing else comes on the horizon, I will re-order it when I have time to integrate it into my system (i'll be out of town for most of september and october).

Anyway, I liked it better than the 828 for the following reasons:

Faster specs, smaller unit (1/2 rack), mobile power adapter (can have if run on a battery for true mobile recording), it can run at 96, have heard very good things about their drivers.
 
Thanks for the info! I'd still like to hear if anybody has a successful laptop studio going with any of this gear or similar stuff.
-Jamie
 
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