Macbook Pro: Usb HD or usb Audio interface?

[dirtygringo]

Hi,
Currently I have a Macbook Pro with a external Firewire hard drive connected to a
Expresscard Firewire card and a Liquid Mix connected to the Firewire 400 port of the mbp.
I know its best for these devices to have their own Firewire bus so what's the best bet?
Replace the Firewire hd with a usb version and buy a FW interface (a duet maybe?)
Or buy a Usb soundcard?
I make Dance/Electronic music so I wont be running loads of audio tracks. Mostly vsti tracks but I need a nice interface for recording vocals.

Any ideas? any help would be GREATLY appreciated as I can't make my mind up!

Cheers

[tms8707056]

USB HDDs are not a good idea. They are too slow for serious audio work. Is your expresscard firewire 800 or 400? If your card is FW400 and has two ports, you would be fine running two devices on the card. Technically they would be on the same bus (the expresscard bus), but the expresscard slot has enough bandwidth to support the devices.

The only problem I can think of is power requirements for running an interface or Liquid Mix on the expresscard. To my knowledge, the expresscard slot is not capable of providing power to firewire cards or the attached devices. However, if your devices do nor require bus power, then this point is irrelevant.

[inthere]

My Liquid Mix does fine when I connect it to the firewire express card, but I have to connect the external power. I suggest the Apogee Duet for your sound card and maybe getting a firewire 800 hd

[Francis Vaughan]

I think I'm missing something here. Since you have a MBP with internal Firewire, and an Express-card Firewire, you already have two distinct FW busses. If you have the power issue under control there should be no further issue.

[dirtygringo]

Thanks for the reply's guys.
My express card has 2 ports and is only firewire 400 and has a optional power supply So
that takes care of any power problems...
Basically have 2 firewire buses but 3 devices so something has to share a bus.

So how about I connect the LiquidMix to the expresscard, the soundcard (probably Duet)
to the laptops FW400 port and a hard drive to the laptops FW800 port?

I don't really want to spend £350 on the duet if I'm gonna have bandwidth problems!

Cheers

P.S my expresscard is a Lindy