Recording Setup Question: Firewire Daisy Chain Content

[Guitar Guy]

I am planning to create a small laptop recording setup. To start with I am looking at getting an external hard drive that is fw800 and 7200rpm to record the music to while the DAW is running on the internal hd (5400 rpm).

Additionally I am going to get an interface, and I have narrowed it down to two:

Focusrite Saffire Pro 14 and Focustrite Scarlette 8i6

These are basically the same in terms of features and have the features I need/want at a price I want to pay. The only difference is the Pro 14 is fw400 and the 8i6 is usb 2.0.

Now I know the fw vs usb thing has been done to death, but my question is a little more specific. The problem is the laptop I will be using has two usb 2.0 ports but only one firewire 800 port. This leaves me with two setups:

1) Daisy chain the pro 14 onto the external hard drive (the downside is that I believe since the interface is fw400, that when daisychained, it pulls all the components in the chain down to fw400 speeds. Additionally this is too much too be bus powered and will require wall worts)

2) use the fw hard drive and the usb 2.0 interface

My question is which will be "best" in your opinion (subjective, I know) in terms of overall performance. I have decided that just between the two interfaces, I would prefer firewire because while usb 2.0 can produce higher data transfer rates than fw400 i have found that fw400 still has higher sustained, continuous transfer rates, which I feel would be better for audio recording.

I am looking to be able to record 4 tracks simultaneously. I am worried that daisy chaining the fw devices will end up being worse because data has to go through all the devices and it drops the hard drive to fw400.

In your opinion, would it be better have the fw400 interface daisychained to an effectively fw400 harddrive, or have the fw800 drive with a usb2.0 interface?

Thanks. Sorry for the long winded post, just trying to be specific with my question.

 

[wahwah]

Re: Recording Setup Question: Firewire Daisy Chain Content

I have a similar setup, using FW800 from computer to external drive as a scratch disk to record audio, and then FW400 to a Metric Halo ULN-2 audio interface. The only difference in my case is that the Metric Halo is only 2 in and out, but I think you will find that FW400 is more than adequate for recording 4 tracks of audio simultaneously. It should be noted that any conversations between computer and external drive will still operate at FW800 data transfer speeds, eg, sending a copy of a completed project back to the computer for backup. Apart from the obvious fact that your audio interface will be operating within its limitation of FW400, you will not notice any other negative effect of daisychaining. These devices are designed for that purpose. In fact in my setup, I have a second external drive daisychained from the FW800 port of the first drive which I use for Time Machine (Mac) backups and as a safety copy for audio files, as well as holding all of my samples and impulse responses. In which case, the first drive is sending out to both the audio interface FW400, and the second drive FW800, simultaneously. No problem.

Just be aware that if you use the chain, comp > external drive > audio interface, you will always have to have the external drive switched on for your audio interface to communicate with your computer. No big deal, but just something to remember!




Cheers........................................... wahwah