Firewire vs. USB...Hard Drive/Interface?

[JLM107]

Hey Everyone,

Brand new here. I'm looking at planning out all of my gear for my studio before I get it.

I'm going to be getting an iMac with Logic. I know I'll need an external hard drive and an interface, two integral parts of the home studio. iMacs come with only 1 firewire port standard. I know it would be ideal to expand to more ports so that I could get both a Firewire interface and hard drive to minimize latency issues, but I am already going to be financing the iMac and I'm strapped for cash. My question is: Should I go with a USB hard drive and a Firewire interface, or conversely, a Firewire hard drive and USB interface?

Thanks,
Joey

 

[TimOBrien]

Firewire was built to daisy-chain devices (up to 63) and has the bandwidth to stream several hundred tracks simultaneously, so having only one firewire port is not a problem.

I've got a Glyph firewire drive daisy-chained to my Motu828mkII for years with zero problems.

Best advice: Get a drive with multiple interfaces and find out what works for you.
(Glyph and other drives have firewire, usb2 and eSata ports in the same box)
With multiple ports you wont be restricted in the future....

 

[notCardio]

I'm pretty sure that this is still true, that USB will only support two channels of input simultaneously, meaning that, if you're recording multiple channels (like a live band) you'll have to mix down to stereo before committing them to disk. For that reason alone, I would go with firewire, and as Tim said, for both the interface and the hard drive.

 

[javierf55]

Apologize if this question sounds stupid but I prefer to ask as this disk has all these connections available; FireWire 800 and 400, USB 2.0, and eSATA.

My question is, if I connect the hard drive using the FW800, can I use the rest to connect other peripherals to the PC?

As an example, can I connect the hard drive through the FW800 and plug the M-Audio Fast Track Pro to the USB port of the Glyph? or are the ports just "flavors" to connect only the disk?