Please help me to decide on firewire interface

[drakem]

Hello to all

I´ve research for a long time on the forums on the subject but it only made my head burning

I´d like to start with onlocation recordings. Here in Namibia most of the time we have only small ensambles, so i thought about 4mic preamp for the starters.
I allready have an ACER laptop (PC), so the idea is to use a firewire stuff, but which :

1. MOTU Traveler looks loke a good choice, but i red somewhere that it has a problem with bus power on laptops, and with daisy chaining fw (I´d like to use FW harddrive).
Is it true? And how are the drivers for XP? Latency? Didnt find anything about latency on the web.
2. Mackie Onyx?: Somone wrote that it doesnt work at all with laptops
3.Firepod looks good too, but as far as i understand doesnt have ADAT for future upgrades.
4. RME FF800 looks like a best choice for now but is quite expensive. Ive allready HDSP card in the daw and it works wonderfull.
5. In one post somone mentioned Echo Audiofire 8. Looks nice but then i need an additional preamp to even start with. And again one has to choose.

I have about 1500$ - 1800$ to spend, but Im really a bit confused. It looks that a I wasted my money in the past for a PC laptop.

I hope you can help me
Thanks

drakem

[buchiach]

i'm pretty much in the same position as you, and am edging towards the traveler as it has plenty of connectivity, meant to sound good (nice pres!) and is very portable. the fireface would probably be better, but is more expensive and not as portable. i was also considering the metric halo 2882, but have read on here that the pres get noisy which is pretty offputting, and its about 5 years old now which probably doesnt make a difference but seems like it should!

[dlmorley]

RME FF400 is maybe what you want?
http://www.rme-audio.com/english/firewire/ff400.htm
Metric Halo get's very good reviews too.
http://www.mhlabs.com/metric_halo/products/mio/

you could then maybe just use a small portable mixer for extra mic pre's...

[drakem]

Thanks for reply!



Metric Halo is Masc only i gues, FW400 has two pres only. Can somoene explain the problem with traveler. In the past MOTU wasnt the first choice for PC. How are the drivers now??

Thank you

Drakem

[dlmorley]

Originally Posted by drakem

Thanks for reply!



Metric Halo is Masc only i gues, FW400 has two pres only. Can somoene explain the problem with traveler. In the past MOTU wasnt the first choice for PC. How are the drivers now??

Thank you

Drakem

Ok PC. Sorry.
I think you could do worse than getting the FF400 and a small mixer for those 2 extra pre's. I have yet to get too excited by the pre's on any of the firewire interface.
Traveller will probably sound fine, but they are certainly more reliable on Mac and I was not in love with my 896 as the build quality was a bit iffy.

[drakem]

Thanks dlmorley

When I take this small mixer do I go analog into FF400? Or should I look for one with adat out?

By the way, at Front Audio the price difference between 400 and 800 is only 450U$. Can I get decent pre for that? Should I go for FF800 do I have to get a PCMCIA Fw 800 or it runs on 400?

Sorry, lot of questions.
Thank you for your time

drakeM

[dlmorley]

Originally Posted by drakem

Thanks dlmorley

When I take this small mixer do I go analog into FF400? Or should I look for one with adat out?

By the way, at Front Audio the price difference between 400 and 800 is only 450U$. Can I get decent pre for that? Should I go for FF800 do I have to get a PCMCIA Fw 800 or it runs on 400?

Sorry, lot of questions.
Thank you for your time

drakeM

Hi
I would go analog in. Yes, there is not a really big difference in price but enough to get this:
http://mercenary.com/fmrrnmp.html
and that will be better than built in pre's.

[drockfresh]

Hi drakem, if I were doing on location computer recording of live ensembles then reliability of the equipment and especially the software drivers for the interface would be most important on my list. If your interface is finicky or goes down, you will lose the performance by no fault of your own, and that would suck.

I have never used MOTU, but I will say that for me RME drivers have been rock-solid on the PC

RME Love Letter

RME Love Letter

I would recommend anything RME

[aracu]

The fireface 800 has an advantage in that you can use it's
pres as a standalone unit without a computer hooked up.
Maybe the 400 is like that also (the specs of the 800 and
400 are subtly different). The pres are good enough quality,
uncoloured, but without much gain, so better suited for use
with condenser mics. It's possibly the most practical interface
out there for a wide variety of applications. I got a new one
for $1000. on e-bay without the RME warrenty.

[tnjazz]

I've used a Traveler in the field, with an additional preamp into the lightpipe input and an external firewire drive daisy-chained from it. It worked perfectly for me with no issues.

The only issue I see for you is that you can't bus-power the Traveler (I ran it on a Mac, so I was able to power it through the 6 pin firewire).

That being said, the Traveler is a nice piece overall. It's not great, but I will say I was pleasantly surprised at the sound I got out of the stock preamps (I was expecting much worse, based on stories I've read here).

[drakem]

Hi to all Thank you to your all response

I´ll go the RME route. I somehow dont trust others in the drivers domain. Im already running Hdsp with tascam´s DM24 ard and I love it. Never did a qiurk, I did install games, demos, 3d graphic software (my wife likes it) and it never coused the problem.

They are a bit expensive but i think a proper driver makes your live easer!

I think Ill get it from Front End Audio so please, WAR, if you read it; please give me nice discount for being at the ass of the world

Thank You all for your help and time. It helped us a lot. If I make a mistake it was a public decision. at least

drakeM

[ghellquist]

Originally Posted by drakem

I allready have an ACER laptop (PC), so the idea is to use a firewire stuff, but which :

1. MOTU Traveler looks loke a good choice, but i red somewhere that it has a problem with bus power on laptops, and with daisy chaining fw (I´d like to use FW harddrive).
Is it true? And how are the drivers for XP? Latency? Didnt find anything about latency on the web.

I have never seen an Acer portable with bus power on the firewire. There are a very few (handful) PC laptops with firewire power. So regardless that part of the question is not relevant -- you need to give your interface external power.

If an absolute requirement is to bus power the interface from the ACER your only choice is USB1 or USB2. With USB1 you get much higher latency and generally only two channels (a few gives four). Very few interfaces run on USB2 as of today.

Drivers for the 828mkII which I used worked without problems on an XP laptop (Sony Vaio). Latency goes as low as any firewire interface, less you need to go with a PCMCIA card (lovely unit is the RME Multiface). But if you are simply recording on location latency is not an issue at all, just set any large buffers you want, they will not make any difference.

All in all, there are no problems with the Motu as far as I know. I like the RME-s better, but that is a lot about taste and you have to pay a bit more, sort of goes hand in hand.

Gunnar

[drakem]

Hi ghellquist

I wasnt even thinking about bus power. I cant imagine being on locotion and somehow loose power!. I just thought, it is a big problem somehow.
I was thinking about PCMCIA FW anyway ( i cant imagine built in FW being realiable enough). You have aswered a lot of my questions , so I´ll maybe give the traveler a shot. I do perform with my laptop on stage, but i can live with 11ms latency, and I guess the drivers are strong enough to give that buffer.

Thank You all again

drakeM