How can one hook up 2 FW devices (an Maudio FW 410 and an external FW HDD for data) to an ibook for a remote recording setup? The ibook only has 1 FW port. I've heard that daisychaining is not recommended for such an application. Would a FW hub work or are there other suggestions?

Thanks,

drbam

there really is conflicting advice on this, especially over at digidesign forums

I think digi dont recommend it because they cannot guarantee peripheral devices from other manufacturers.....but, if you rip thru their forums there are lots of posts from people who have both configurations (input device first - drive second) or (drive first - input device last) with no problems...

I dont think you would munt anything by giving it a go.

T

While it is no problem to daisy-chain them, experience tells me it is generally a better idea to get a powered FW hub (pretty cheap and worth it) and connect the devices in a 'star-shape' configuration.
Since in both cases you are sharing the same FW bus, performance will be the same, but stability might improve by not daisy-chaining.
Also the hub is always a good investment because you are able to connect more than 2 devices to the iBook.

Have fun recording and don't worry!
Cheers
Arthur

Arthur and Tube – Thanks so much!!

drbam

It can be done, but it will greatly reduce your track count and the performances from both devices. It'd be better to partition your internal and record to that.

If your track counts are low (sorry I can't give you a figure) there should be no problem. But you'll hit a bottleneck.

I'm sure Arthur knows what he's talking about because I don't know the effectiveness of the hub, since it is sharing the same bus, and that's the issue.

If I were you and I have done this as well, I'd reformat my drive into two partitions like I said. Then you don't need to split them off and can just use your ext drive for backup.

I wouldn't record to the internal drive without partitioning. I know there's also conflicting data about this too. For the simple reason that audio files greatly fragment a drive. Partitioning makes it easy to reformat that drive often without effect the system partition. I regularly reformat/zero format, before each recording session.