Powerbook + Ensemble + External Firewire Drive

[Douchebag]

I've been searching for hours but can't construct a nice enough query to find anything useful...so I'm going to post a message here.

I have an external Firewire (400) drive that I hooked up to my ensemble in series, daisychain like. I was getting weird pops and clicks in the recorded audio (with the drive on either side of the ensemble). I remember reading somewhere that the Firewire ports on the ensemble are only recommended by apogee to link other ensembles. Looking on their site today, though, I see no mention of it. Nevertheless, the pops and clicks make the extra firewire port on the ensemble useless to me as I only have one ensemble. So...I started tracking directly to my Powerbook's internal drive. Once I hit about 12 tracks it started with the disk too slow errors. This is expected and I'm not complaining.

I'd like to hook up an external drive so I can track 2 tracks at once with 24 total audio tracks in the timeline. I'm using Logic Pro.

Would you recommend I a) get a Firewire 800 enclosure for my external drive and use the powerbook's 800 port for the drive and the 400 port for the ensemble or b) use a PCMCIA firewire adapter for my existing firewire 400 drive? Those are my two options at this point.

This is a later generation powerbook. It's a 1.67ghz with 1GB memory.

[Geert van den Berg]

Originally Posted by ******bag

Would you recommend I a) get a Firewire 800 enclosure for my external drive and use the powerbook's 800 port for the drive and the 400 port for the ensemble or b) use a PCMCIA firewire adapter for my existing firewire 400 drive? Those are my two options at this point.

Both are good options, If I were in your shoes I'd buy an extra firewire drive with FW800 connectors.

Harddrives aren't that expensive and you can never have too much harddrive space. (use the FW400 disk as an extra backup disk, leave it as it is, buying a new enclosure for it would probably almost equal the price of an enclosure with a HD in it. Especially if you look out for a good deal).

[explorer]

If the firewire 400 drive you have is fast enough for your needs why not use a firewire 800 to firewire 400 cable so you can plug it into the 800 port? Probably the simplest option?

[chanigelgor]

hi..

are the ensemble's drivers up to date?

if so, make sure you power up like this :

i)connect external drive to ensemble

ii)power up ensemble

iii)power up mac

i remember apogee saying that was the way to go back in the beta driver days..

works fine for me..

good luck!


sd

[Douchebag]

Wow, thanks.

explorer, I did not know such a cable existed! Thanks.

chanigelgor, Do you know when the non-beta drivers were released? What's weird is that maestro says my firmware is 1.7.42 yet on the apogee site it appears that the highest firmware version is 1.6.6. I'm not sure how to tell what version of the driver I have...I will have to research that a bit.

Geert van den Berg, thanks. I didn't consider finding a complete external drive...but yesterday when I was looking for an enclosure I noticed they were pretty pricey.

[Geert van den Berg]

Originally Posted by explorer

If the firewire 400 drive you have is fast enough for your needs why not use a firewire 800 to firewire 400 cable so you can plug it into the 800 port? Probably the simplest option?

This is an exellent suggestion as a cable would be cheaper than a new drive!

Though performance wise a drive with FW800 would probably give you a slight performance boost as far as the amount of tracks you can record and playback, there are stats of this on the Lacie website. LaCie - USB 2.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800Bigger Disk Extreme with Triple Interface -

But still your current drive could be enough for your needs.

[Douchebag]

Today I picked up a LaCie d2 external firewire drive with support (and cables) for firewire 400, 800, and usb 2.0. Using the firewire 800, even playback through logic completely chokes. I hear stuttering audio for a second followed by the core audio disk too slow error. After looking into it, it appears on the apple docs that the firewire 800 and 400 ports on the Powerbook are on the same bus. So, I decided to try the USB 2.0. Seems ok but I can see in logic's system performance monitor that it's still choking the hard disk. I'm at a loss here. Is anyone having success with a powerbook, external hdd, and the ensemble? Would upgrading to Logic 7.2 be a good idea? I am on the latest 7.1.x right now so I don't even have ensemble integration. I see myself buying a macbook in the near future

Ugh...the word is s t u t t e r i n g.

[MattiMattMatt]

Originally Posted by ******bag

Would you recommend I a) get a Firewire 800 enclosure for my external drive and use the powerbook's 800 port for the drive and the 400 port for the ensemble or b) use a PCMCIA firewire adapter for my existing firewire 400 drive? Those are my two options at this point.

IMHO, adding 3rd party firewire adapters are one of the most underappreciated ways to boost system performance.

[Chucho]

on a slightly different point, I remember when the ensemble was announced, I tried for ages to get a answer as to g4 compatability and there was such a deafening silence, I took it to mean that the ensemble/g4 marriage wasn't made in heaven.
the best I heard was that they CAN work.

[Ricey]

i have the same powerbook. if you run the FW400 drive on a FW800 connection, i believe your connection speed will remain at 400, you can confirm this in the system profiler.

but more importantly, if you're running the interface from the 400 port and a FW800 drive from the 800 port, you're still running everything from 1 FW Bus.

the most performance you'll get is by getting a FW400 card for the PCiE slot and running the interface from that(seperate bus), and running your audio from an external FW800 drive connected to the 800 port on the book.

you should also max out the RAM as a rule, which means replacing existing 512MB of RAM with a 1 GB stick as well as getting another 1GB stick :(

i go to OWC for drives and RAM, i think they're excellent!

[Geert van den Berg]

Originally Posted by ******bag

Today I picked up a LaCie d2 external firewire drive with support (and cables) for firewire 400, 800, and usb 2.0. Using the firewire 800, even playback through logic completely chokes. I hear stuttering audio for a second followed by the core audio disk too slow error. After looking into it, it appears on the apple docs that the firewire 800 and 400 ports on the Powerbook are on the same bus. So, I decided to try the USB 2.0. Seems ok but I can see in logic's system performance monitor that it's still choking the hard disk. I'm at a loss here. Is anyone having success with a powerbook, external hdd, and the ensemble? Would upgrading to Logic 7.2 be a good idea? I am on the latest 7.1.x right now so I don't even have ensemble integration. I see myself buying a macbook in the near future

Ugh...the word is s t u t t e r i n g.

I am very sorry about given you the wrong advice, a PCMCIA card would have been a better option because you could have used that with your current drive. (luckily you can never have too much drive space!)

I've have a MacBook Pro, I've looked into it, even on that machine the firewire buss is shared, so that would not make a world of difference.

Have you tried adjusting the buffersizes in Logic?

I think that upgrading to Logic 7.2 would not make any significant difference.

What do you mean with choking the harddrive when using USB? It either works or it does not, if you don't hear any stuttering or get disk too slow messages it's fine, if the meter shows some disk action it's generally not a problem, do you see it overloading? Offcourse if that happens it's not good.

Also at which resolution are you recording. 12 tracks at 48/44.1 kHz is not much, but at 96 kHz it's a whole different story.