new firewire 800 drives and interfaces?

Author
Post
Essentials Only Full Version
MuseCycle Media
Max Output Level: -90 dBFS
  • Total Posts : 19
  • Joined: 2004/09/02 11:05:57
  • Location: New York
  • Status: offline
2005/08/13 21:23:56 (permalink)

new firewire 800 drives and interfaces?

Has anyone had experience with the new Firewire 800 drives or Interfaces? Will they offer a substantial improvment in performance?

Here are the links to a couple of the new products

RME Hammerfall Fireface 800
http://www.rme-audio.com/english/firewire/ff800.htm
Maxtor external drive
http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.ba88f6d7cf664718376049b291346068/?channelpath=/en_us/Products/External%20Hard%20Drives/OneTouch%20II%20Family/Maxtor%20OneTouch%20II%20FireWire%20800

I have a new laptop and I am thinking about buying a firewire 800 PCMCIA card to run the above products if there would be a significant boost in power

I will be running Kontact 2 and Sonar on that laptop, maybe live?


Garius Hill
Artistic Director
MuseCycle Media

Sonar, Neumann Mikes, Gigastudio, Kontact, large sample library, Sony Z1U High Definition Cameras, Adobe Video Collection: running on 3 computers
#1

5 Replies Related Threads
    steverispin
    Max Output Level: -85 dBFS
    • Total Posts : 278
    • Joined: 2005/01/19 13:11:02
    • Location: Buckinghamshire, UK
    • Status: offline
    RE: new firewire 800 drives and interfaces? 2005/08/16 12:25:24 (permalink)
    Hi,
    Can't speak about the Fireface 800, though the consensus on these forums seems pretty positive.
    Regards the drives, I've been using 2x LaCie D2 triple interface drives for a couple of years now, with no problems at all, running up to 100 tracks simultaneous (for testing purposes). The drive in the LaCie box is a Western Digital, and they rackmount.

    In short, you run into the transfer-limit of the drive well before the FW800 gives up. I guess you'd only stretch things running multiple drives in some kind of Raid, but AFAIK, that's not currently possible on Windows/FW.

    On a desktop, if you're running lots of Sonar audio, and streaming big samplesets to Kontakt simultaneously, I'd probably go with 2x FW400 drives, or 1x FW400, 1x FW800 to keep the datastreams separate from the Fireface i/o

    For live use, presumably you'll only need 2x or 4x streams out of the fireface, so you shouldn't max out the FW800 capacity, especially if your PCMCIA card has 2 or more ports, but I'd check the data capacity of the PCMCIA slot anyhow, just to make sure!

    Hope this helps
    Best Regards
    Steve
    #2
    Guitarmech111
    Max Output Level: -24.5 dBFS
    • Total Posts : 5085
    • Joined: 2003/11/06 10:18:53
    • Location: Bayou City, TX
    • Status: offline
    RE: new firewire 800 drives and interfaces? 2005/08/16 12:53:39 (permalink)
    I have a FireFace800 and I love it. I don't remember having to call it a hammerfall though.

    This unit rocks and interfaces with ADATs easily enough. You can record up to 56 tracks at once if you machine can handle it.

    Peace,
    Conley Shepherd
    Joyful Noise Productions
    PC config: (Win performance base score = 7.7) ASUS Sabertooth 990 FX -amd fx-8150 - core processor am3+ - 32G Corsair 1066 DDR3 - PNY GTX670 2g gddr5 - Corsair Force SSD 120G - Samsung 750G SATA drives - WD 1tb Black (Audio files) - WD 2TB for storage - RME UFX - USB ASIO 2/2016 drivers Win8 

     
    Without a mess, there is no message
    #3
    daverich
    Max Output Level: -41 dBFS
    • Total Posts : 3418
    • Joined: 2003/11/06 05:59:00
    • Location: south west uk
    • Status: offline
    RE: new firewire 800 drives and interfaces? 2005/08/16 13:49:58 (permalink)
    I also have the fireface.

    All usual quotes about cold dead hands apply.

    Kind regards

    Dave Rich

    For Sale - 10.5x7ft Whisperroom recording booth.

    http://www.daverichband.com
    http://www.soundclick.com/daverich
    #4
    malexander
    Max Output Level: -90 dBFS
    • Total Posts : 28
    • Joined: 2005/06/06 22:25:34
    • Location: Los Angeles
    • Status: offline
    RE: new firewire 800 drives and interfaces? 2005/08/16 18:25:47 (permalink)
    I have a Dell D800 with a LaCie FW 800 PC Card (2 FW 800, 1 FW 400). The PC Card is hooked up to my Fireface 800 and a LaCie FW 800 external hard drive. No troubles.

    I use the external drive to store samples and one of my two internal drives for recording. All is good. I did not notice a huge difference going from my internal 7200 rpm drive to the external LaCie. My suggestion is to first make sure your laptop has dual 7200 rpm drives (100 GB is the max these days for a laptop drive) and 2 GB of RAM. One drive for system/programs/samples and the other for projects/recording. Also be sure to defrag your drives on a regular basis.

    According to RME, I could use the Fireface on a FW 400 connection and save the FW 800 for when I have multiple Firefaces. Since it's working fine on FW 800, I've left it there for now.

    Finally, the Maxtor you noted most likely comes with some software to automatically run backup software when you press the button on the front. Make sure you turn this feature off after installing the software. Otherwise, it's another little service running in the background tacking away processing power from SONAR.

    Regards,
    Matthew
    #5
    MArwood
    Max Output Level: -57 dBFS
    • Total Posts : 1816
    • Joined: 2003/11/06 20:04:42
    • Status: offline
    RE: new firewire 800 drives and interfaces? 2005/08/17 01:40:13 (permalink)
    When did you get the Fireface?
    Max Arwood
    #6
    Jump to:
    © 2024 APG vNext Commercial Version 5.1