• Audio

  common firewire bus an issue?

  Posted by Kat Dalton on February 22, 2008 at 1:52 am

  I’m considering buying MOTU Ultralite for use with my Macbook Pro 15″ 2.33 GHz core 2 duo. I’m not an audio professional. Want to do some recording/mixing for use in Final Cut Pro.

  With firewire video interfaces (such as AJA IO), you’re not supposed to use the FW video interface with FW raid because the single FW bus on my laptop can’t handle both at same time. (The FW 400 and FW 800 ports use same FW bus.)

  Is this an issue also with MOTO Ultralight? Would I run into problems if I use FW drive? I’ve been searching the internet, and only one person mentioned this problem, and I think he was working with 30 tracks. I wouldn’t have so many tracks, maybe 8.

  I would also be using the Ultralight for monitoring audio from FCP (connecting my speakers to it). At the moment, I don’t have a video interface for my laptop; have been working with still photos+audio.

  Thanks.

  Kat Dalton replied 18 years, 2 months ago 2 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Ty Ford

  February 22, 2008 at 8:40 pm

  “Is this an issue also with MOTO Ultralight? Would I run into problems if I use FW drive?”

  Hello Kat and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

  The answer is a definite maybe. Once you start adding firewire devices, the platform gets shakey. Machine configuration, separate FW busses on PCI cards sometimes help, sometimes not.

  Regards,

  Ty Ford

  Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
  Watch Ty play guitar
• 

  Kat Dalton

  February 23, 2008 at 4:00 pm

  Hi Ty. Thanks for responding. Not happy to hear that even if I add a firewire card to my laptop, I could still run into trouble. Darn. What are you audio guys using for storage when you use firewire audio interface? SATA? I don’t really want to have to buy a SATA raid right now.

  What about USB for the audio interface? From what I’ve been reading, people tend to not like USB, but maybe it’s just USB 1 they don’t like. I found the Edirol UA-101 which is USB 2.

  Actually, I don’t need all the i/o on UA-101 (or the MOTU Ultralite for that matter). But the less expensive, less i/o interfaces seem to be FW (Edirol FA-66, Presonus Firebox 6×10) or USB 1 (Edirol UA-25).

  Thanks for your help. I enjoyed your performance in the YouTube video. Great sound, too. I was surprised to hear such good sound on YouTube.

  Kat
• 

  Ty Ford

  February 23, 2008 at 5:04 pm

  Hello Kat,

  Let me try to be more clear. You may be fine with running audio. The problem may happen when you try to run FCP and the audio program.

  If the firewire card comes in to another part of the system you might be OK. My Pro Tools rig is always connected via FW400. On my G5, I was told (almost by accident) that putting the card in the upper of the three slots put the data into the computer at a point where it didn’t run smack into the other firewire buss. That let me attach a CD burning robot with a FW400 and a USB connection. I still ran into flukey problems when I had one external FW400 archive drive attached.

  I’m not qualified to tell you whether or not the card slot is similarly configured. Even if someone said “yes” I’d want to try before I bought into it.

  USB is problematic because of the latency. An interesting thought though, could there be enough bandwidth on USB to get by without bothering the Firewire buss. Dunno. You’re on the cutting edge there. Try it and see if you can do it without incurring big costs. I have been told “Can’t be done” any number of times and have found that isn’t always true.

  Thanks for the compliments on the guitar. It helps to have a great sounding guitar. The longer I’m on the planet and the more guitars I hear, the luckier I feel to have bought that Martin so long ago. My Pro Tools system is not exotic, but the front end — mics, preamps, A/D converters — are. They make a difference as does the acoustic design of my studio.
  I think I can make a difference. I think I can make audio (and video) work pretty well on YouTube. Local folks are starting to recognize that and are coming to me to get the job done.

  If you go to my OnlIne Archive:

  https://idisk.mac.com/tyreeford-Public?view=web

  Look in the GuitarsOfPikesville folder for other guitar playing videos I’ve shot here. These are “Before YouTube.”

  Here they are on youtube, which I guess is the ultimate test. 🙂
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFnov7Qe6Sc
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn22WSkh8Ag&feature=related

  Regards,

  Ty Ford

  Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
  Watch Ty play guitar

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• 

  Kat Dalton

  February 23, 2008 at 5:39 pm

  Hi Ty,

  Thanks for your further thoughts. Maybe I’ll just buy something which is returnable and try it out.

  I’ll check out your articles and recordings. My sister has a Martin guitar which she bought many years ago, too. Acoustic instruments can sound so beautiful.

  Thanks again for taking the time to respond.

  Best,
  Kat

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