Ableton Forum

I have a FW400 sound card and a FW800 Hard drive.
Should i plug the sound card into the hard drive, then the hard drive into the FW800 Port on my computer?
Doesn't it work that the last link in the chain sets the band width?
I want to read from the hard drive, not actually read and write to it.

I could just go ahead and try this, but my stuff is still all packed in boxes from moving house last week.

Cheers if any one can help...

It depends on 2 things:

1) What type of FW port is on your computer. 400 & 800 are incompatiable.

2) Which device would let you daisy chain the other.

You can get cables that convert 800 down to 400, but I'm not sure if it can go the other way round. SO you need to check and then make a decision based on that.

As for bandwidth, It's split evenly across the shared bus.

EdRyan wrote:It depends on 2 things:

1) What type of FW port is on your computer. 400 & 800 are incompatiable.

2) Which device would let you daisy chain the other.

You can get cables that convert 800 down to 400, but I'm not sure if it can go the other way round. SO you need to check and then make a decision based on that.

As for bandwidth, It's split evenly across the shared bus.

I'm not sure what your saying here?
You most certainly can get 400 to 800 adapters and cables, and also 800 to 400 adapters and cables.
You can not plug a FW400 device into an 800 port and expect FW800 Performance, maybe that is what you are suggesting.

What i am asking is.
Is it a good idea in general to have the sound card further down stream that the HD?
In the past i have daisy chained a hard drive after the sound card...
I'm curious if i can swap this set up around.

Like i said, i could try it for my self, the only problem being all my drives are in a box "some where" in my garage probably under a whole bunch of other stuff. Maybe some one has experience using the set up i am asking about and can share this with me to ease my wondering mind...

you should try it out... if it works fine.. fine.
if not, get a firewire pcmcia card to add an independent fw port to you computer an plug the soundcard into it.

'daisy chaining' .... sounds a bit noncey, doesn't it ?

Gidday Mr Belly!

both should work fine in any order daisy-chained, in my experience with my Fireface400, should I hot-swap the drive off the FW bus, the Fireface will take a second to re-acquire the MBP, but it always does. [yes I know I shouldn't really be hot-swapping FW drives too often] and this may or may not be relevant to your soundcard, but if it plugs in and works, it should just work.

obligatory--->>YMMV

cheers
paddy

here's an extract from a post on gearslutz which can be found here:
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-co ... tudio.html


"7. Also concerned that FW800 >> FW400 limits chaining to 2 devices - right now I'm chaining 4 devices (2x MH and 2x HD's) with no problems at all
I've decided I'm going to take my Time Machine disk out of the Firewire chain and run it off USB2 from now on

So my new Firewire chain is:
FW800 Mac Mini >> FW800 La Cie Drive >> FW400 MH2882 >> FW400 ULN-2

I was mistaken in thinking that adding a FW400 device to a FW800 chain lowers the overall speed of the bus. According to Metric Halo this is not the case - in my chain the Mini communicates with the Drive at FW800 speeds, and the drive is linked to the 2882 at FW400 speed."

Pitch Black wrote:Gidday Mr Belly!

Hay hay..
Summer is coming, i could be out your way for ice creams on the beach soon.
We could meet up and make sand castles if your that way inclined.

4/4 wrote:'daisy chaining' .... sounds a bit noncey, doesn't it ?

Only if i was planning on doing this in prison.
There would also need to be biscuits involved.