firewire question

[gamba]

hi, i just got a motu 828 mk3 hybrid firewire interface and was wondering how the signal flow is when hooked up using an external firewire drive. also on the drive is vst saples ,loops and backup from internal drive. this is being done on a imac with one texas instruments chipset firewire bus. can anyone tell me what device get chained to the other? the manual does not get into hooking up the interface with other devices.

 

[Michael Mason]

Your hard drive doesn't really go into the signal flow. The DAW loads up your plugins, the signal gets routed through the interface, into the DAW.

The chaining supported by the interface is usually other interfaces, as supported by the first one. It may or may not support chaining a hd.

 

[TimOBrien]

My setup with zero problems:

iMac -> Glyph fw800 samples drive --> Glyph projects drive --> motu828mkII

Put the interface last, as its a fw400 device.
Once you put a fw400 device on the chain, everything after it goes at 400 speeds.
All you need is a fw800-to-fw400 cable when it switches.