Philip Perkins Posted November 25, 2007 Report Share Posted November 25, 2007 I've always used firewire drives for this purpose. I ended up with some Firelite USB 2 drives, and so far they seem to be fine. On paper they can actually be slightly faster than the FW version of the same thing. Is using these for small jobs (6-8 tracks) a bad idea? Computer is a 1.5g G4 Powerbook, w/ USB 2. Philip Perkins Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Perkins Posted November 25, 2007 Author Report Share Posted November 25, 2007 I've always used firewire drives for this purpose. I ended up with some Firelite USB 2 drives, and so far they seem to be fine. On paper they can actually be slightly faster than the FW version of the same thing. Is using these for small jobs (6-8 tracks) a bad idea? Computer is a 1.5g G4 Powerbook, w/ USB 2. Philip Perkins I found Take V's post from about a year ago where he opined against USB drives, saying that they didn't manage continuous recording as well as FW, but for SMALL jobs they would be ok. Anyone actually tried this? Philip Perkins Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ptalsky Posted November 25, 2007 Report Share Posted November 25, 2007 Philip, I'm sure Take can give you the more technically correct version of this, but a very technical friend of mine explained that with USB, the data still goes through the system bus to get to the drive, where as with Firewire, the data goes straight to the drive. So even though USB is rated slightly faster than Firewire, USB has more overhead that makes it actually slower. That being said, for smaller jobs (6 tracks or so) I would imagine that it really won't matter all that much. Either USB or FW is still better than recording to the internal system drive. Phil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Perkins Posted November 25, 2007 Author Report Share Posted November 25, 2007 I just did a series of long test recordings in 8 tr 16/48, and the system got to the 2GB Poly limit every time before starting a new file with this drive. Philip Perkins Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bash Posted November 25, 2007 Report Share Posted November 25, 2007 I regularly run my SADiE LRX 2 in 64 track mode - to an external USB 2 drive - with absolutely no blips at all. I think it may be to do with the way that SADiE works, but Studio Audio recommend USB over FW. It might of course be that they are PC centric rather than Mac centric!! Kindest regards to all, hope that the Turkey fest was fab, and dont forget, its back to work tomorrow!! Simon B I found Take V's post from about a year ago where he opined against USB drives, saying that they didn't manage continuous recording as well as FW, but for SMALL jobs they would be ok. Anyone actually tried this? Philip Perkins Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Perkins Posted November 25, 2007 Author Report Share Posted November 25, 2007 I regularly run my SADiE LRX 2 in 64 track mode - to an external USB 2 drive - with absolutely no blips at all. I think it may be to do with the way that SADiE works, but Studio Audio recommend USB over FW. It might of course be that they are PC centric rather than Mac centric!! Kindest regards to all, hope that the Turkey fest was fab, and dont forget, its back to work tomorrow!! Simon B Hiya Simon--I'm a Sadie user too, although unfortunatly not on LRX2. I think the whole way Sadie handles USB is different from a Mac, or a Mac laptop at least. That said, I know David Wooley over @ Thornquest is running his LRX on a MacBookPro w/ BootCamp and it seems to be working ok. I'll see if anyone bites on this notion over on the Metacorder group and report. Philip Perkins Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ramsay Posted November 25, 2007 Report Share Posted November 25, 2007 I've always used an external Maxtor 100gig One touch with Boom Recorder. I have only recorded up to 10 tracks tho. I have shied away from hubs just because it is another thing to go wrong. My Motu Ultralight uses the firewire input on the macbook so I'm only left with usb conections for the external drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Perkins Posted November 25, 2007 Author Report Share Posted November 25, 2007 I've always used an external Maxtor 100gig One touch with Boom Recorder. I have only recorded up to 10 tracks tho. I have shied away from hubs just because it is another thing to go wrong. My Motu Ultralight uses the firewire input on the macbook so I'm only left with usb conections for the external drive. Thanks--how long have the takes been that you recorded with this rig? Philip Perkins Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ramsay Posted November 25, 2007 Report Share Posted November 25, 2007 I've done tests up to 15 minutes but in the real world I would say the longest take was about 8 minutes. I've done 4 movies without any issues using Boom Recorder and the external drive so far. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Perkins Posted November 25, 2007 Author Report Share Posted November 25, 2007 I've done tests up to 15 minutes but in the real world I would say the longest take was about 8 minutes. I've done 4 movies without any issues using Boom Recorder and the external drive so far. thanks Philip Perkins Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noiz2 Posted November 26, 2007 Report Share Posted November 26, 2007 Philip, When I asked Take about this his answer was basically that under 12-16 tracks it shouldn't make much difference. I've done a number of jobs now using an external USB2 drive with no problems at all. THe drive also has a ESATA port and I was planning to use that but after talking to Take it seemed like the ESATA might be more problematic (seems it doesn't nec. flush it's buffers as intelligently). So in my test runs I tried writing 72 files simultaneously to the USB2 (I worked my way up) and had no errors on a 5 min take (48/24) but the ring buffer was getting 1/4 or so full before flushing. In practice I have done a doc (12 tracks plus a copy at -6db (I was paranoid)(24 files) 48/24 takes up to 1/2 hr, also a concert 4 tracks (again with -6 mirrors so 8 files) 48/24 ~~15 min takes, and the Dali Lama teachings (12 tracks 48/24 2+ hr takes). The only glitch I had was during testing (an abort) and that was fixed with a buffer adjustment. I think I had stopped and started too quickly and the pre and post roll buffers caused too beg a demand (but that is just a guess). Never had any issues in real life and the ring buffer has never gotten more than a slight pie slice of fill before flushing to disk. I had planed to use either ESATA or FW, but I have only one FW port and the ESATA seemed more fragile and poss more trouble. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
takev Posted December 28, 2007 Report Share Posted December 28, 2007 Hi, I guess I am a bit late with answering these questions. I had a customer who found that an external firewire drive made the user interface of Boom Recorder more responsive and the ring buffer showed a more stable flow of data compared to a USB or internal IDE disks on a G5 Power Mac. This was when recording 48 channels. Both USB en IDE let the operating system work hard, interrupting the system whenever it has finished writing/reading some data. Firewire is much more intelligent and is able to work quite a bit on its own without interrupting the system for every little thing. I found out a couple of months ago that MS Windows XP and Vista only does S100 (quarter the speed of firewire 400) transfer over firewire by default. According to Microsoft they have done this because of compatibility problems when they had used the normal S400 transfers in MS Windows 2000. The vendor of my camera head comes with windows XP/Vista software that includes a replacement driver for firewire host controllers to enable the use of S100, S200, S400 and S800 transfers. So on windows XP and Vista a firewire driver is four times slower than a USB2 drive. Also I would like to tell you that formatting your disk using an Apple file system as opposed to FAT will also increase the performance by a lot. Of course you will lose compatibility with Windows systems if you do. Cheers, Take Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Wexler Posted December 28, 2007 Report Share Posted December 28, 2007 I found out a couple of months ago that MS Windows XP and Vista only does S100 (quarter the speed of firewire 400) transfer over firewire by default. According to Microsoft they have done this because of compatibility problems when they had used the normal S400 transfers in MS Windows 2000. So on windows XP and Vista a firewire driver is four times slower than a USB2 drive. Cheers, Take Thank you for explaining this. I am often asked, usually by Windows users, what's so great about Firewire and USB2 is just grand and Firewire will probably just go away. When I try to defend Firewire (based only on my personal experiences with Macs) I am often branded the Mac fanatic (which I am) and an uninformed Apple fanboy. From what you are saying it appears that Firewire does not perform so well under Windows, so to a certain extent my PC Windows using friends do have something to complain about. With Boomrecorder being the wonderful Mac only app that it is, it only makes sense to use Firewire drives. Regards, Jeff Wexler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
takev Posted December 28, 2007 Report Share Posted December 28, 2007 Hello Jeff, For your friends: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885222 http://www.rme-audio.com/english/techinfo/fw800sp2.htm Both actually talk about firewire 800 interfaces jumping back to S100. I am not sure what happens when a computer has a firewire 800 chipset with a firewire 400 port. Cheers, Take Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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