Live 8 + MBP + external fw drive or optibay for recording?

[Skylark]

Greetings all, thanks for reading!

I'm either getting the 7200rpm version or 5400rpm of the 2011 MBP 2,2ghz with 4gb ram and using it with a presonus FP10.

Uses will be for live performance and for when I record bands with maximum of 8 channels of audio at a time going into Ableton.

(In the future I hope to be able to track 20+ channels of audio with a better sound card.)


Herein lies the issue, Iv'e been told that I should use a second hard drive for streaming the audio to and from Ableton, and it has been suggested to me that I should daisy chain my fw400 sound card with an external hard drive (fw400 or 800 not sure).

To me this seems like it would cause problems If I were to record multiple inputs while the computer plays back big project's, lets say 40-50 channels of audio for arguments sake (including virtual instruments).

It seems that pro tools has limitation's regarding streaming to or from a usb drive where Ableton apparently doesn't? Can anyone confirm that it is possible to stream multiple channels of audio while recording more into the computer? Either onto the system hard drive or to an external drive.

It seems to me that a more reliable option would be to remove the DVD drive and replace it with an internal 7200rpm drive.

Thanks for your help, moderators kindly move this if its in the wrong section.

Peace

[dysanfel]

Greetings all, thanks for reading!

I'm either getting the 7200rpm version or 5400rpm of the 2011 MBP 2,2ghz with 4gb ram and using it with a presonus FP10.

Uses will be for live performance and for when I record bands with maximum of 8 channels of audio at a time going into Ableton.

(In the future I hope to be able to track 20+ channels of audio with a better sound card.)


Herein lies the issue, Iv'e been told that I should use a second hard drive for streaming the audio to and from Ableton, and it has been suggested to me that I should daisy chain my fw400 sound card with an external hard drive (fw400 or 800 not sure).

To me this seems like it would cause problems If I were to record multiple inputs while the computer plays back big project's, lets say 40-50 channels of audio for arguments sake (including virtual instruments).

It seems that pro tools has limitation's regarding streaming to or from a usb drive where Ableton apparently doesn't? Can anyone confirm that it is possible to stream multiple channels of audio while recording more into the computer? Either onto the system hard drive or to an external drive.

It seems to me that a more reliable option would be to remove the DVD drive and replace it with an internal 7200rpm drive.

Thanks for your help, moderators kindly move this if its in the wrong section.

Peace

First off, get the 7200RPM internal drive. Secondly, experiment with doing this all off your internal drive before ripping out your DVD to make room for a second drive. There may be no need for an external drive FW400/800 as they are slower than the internal SATA.

Your MBP blows my 2007 MBP out of the water and I can do 8 I/O all day long with it. You can easily do 24 I/O with playback and recording off your 2011 MBP internal 7200 drive. Watch your soft synths CPU usage and you should be fine. I can do this easily on my rack mounted hackintosh I just built, and your MBP is even faster. My gigging session on my hackintosh have reached into the hundreds of tracks now. It really depends on how you organize your session.

I have never tried doing any of this in Protools,but I know Ableton can do it.

Hope this helps

[Skylark]

Hope this helps

Thank's for your comments, I will most certainly do some experimentation when my machine arrives!

All the best!