Firewire 400 vs 800

gutsofgold · Post by **gutsofgold** » Sat May 13, 2006 10:58 am

My PC has a great motherboard with FW800 and I run a MOTU 828mkII with it. No problems with stuttering or bad latency. However, I'm going to be getting a new Mac Book Pro (the 15") and it only has FW400. Will I notice a difference when recording? Overall (just to make note) the specs on the PC and the specs on the Mac Book are almost the same. 2GHz, 1 gig of ram, 100GB harddrive, etc...

Thanks!

thethingwiththestuff · Post by **thethingwiththestuff** » Sat May 13, 2006 11:14 am

you run an 828mk2 off of 800? are you sure? how do you get the 828's cable into the 800 port jack?

John Jeffers · Post by **John Jeffers** » Sat May 13, 2006 2:33 pm

Even if you're running the 828 off a FW800 port, the 828 itself is only FW400. You shouldn't notice any difference running it from a FW400 port.

thething...800 is backward-compatible with 400, and you can get an adapter to run FW400 devices on an 800 port.

thethingwiththestuff · Post by **thethingwiththestuff** » Sat May 13, 2006 3:03 pm

ah, fair enough. thanks

gutsofgold · Post by **gutsofgold** » Sat May 13, 2006 3:19 pm

thats good to know.
thanks.

asmara · Post by **asmara** » Sun May 14, 2006 1:37 pm

I have fireface 800 and always wondered if I should be using the 800 firewire port.
For now the cost of an appropriate cable is prohibitive. But I have never had any problem with the 400FW line running all 8 analog AD/DA
anyone use these?

Jeff White · Post by **Jeff White** » Mon May 15, 2006 9:17 am

I have found that FW800 is better for read/write to disk than FW400. Obvious, right?

I use a Lacie D2 external FW800 (also has one FW400 and one USB2.0) as the record drive for my Powerbook G4. I run my MOTU 828mkii through a FW PCMCIA card so that audio and read/write data are running on separate FW busses. My PB is a 1.5ghz G4 with 768MB of RAM. I record everything at 24bit/44.1kHz and can easily record 8 tracks simultaneously while playing back up to 24 additional tracks. I'm using Digital Performer 4.61.

Jeff

street · Post by **street** » Tue Aug 01, 2006 7:58 pm

An odd bit of architecture on the G4 PowerBooks: FW800 and FW400 are on the same bus, which acts as an 800 bus if the only thing connected on it is 800, but acts as a 400 if an 800 and a 400 thing are both connected to it. This bit of arcana cost me several nights of anguish. Long may you run.

Jeff White · Post by **Jeff White** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 6:06 am

street wrote:An odd bit of architecture on the G4 PowerBooks: FW800 and FW400 are on the same bus, which acts as an 800 bus if the only thing connected on it is 800, but acts as a 400 if an 800 and a 400 thing are both connected to it. This bit of arcana cost me several nights of anguish. Long may you run.

This is why I picked up a PCMCIA FW400card. It keeps my drive and 828mkii on separate busses, and allows me to use FW800 for read/write. I have zero complaints regarding this setup.

Jeff

griff505 · Post by **griff505** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 9:09 am

does your D2 external FW800 make a hell of a noise. Mine does, and has done since i got it years ago. no problems with it other than the noise. thinking of replacing it with a quieter porsche drive.

on the other topic, crazy that the new macbook pros haven't got fw800, maybe the next revision will, well, revise this......

Jeff White · Post by **Jeff White** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 12:08 pm

griff505 wrote:does your D2 external FW800 make a hell of a noise. Mine does, and has done since i got it years ago. no problems with it other than the noise. thinking of replacing it with a quieter porsche drive.

I haven't had any problems with it getting on my nerves yet. How are the Porsche drives?

griff505 wrote:on the other topic, crazy that the new macbook pros haven't got fw800, maybe the next revision will, well, revise this......

The 17" version has FW400 & FW800. I wish that the 15" had it as well. However, you can just get a FW card for the expansion slot and run a second FW buss. Those computers are so much faster than PBs that I can't see read/write being a problem at all. I guess that they are marketing the 17" with the FW800 for video producing guys and gals.

Jeff

griff505 · Post by **griff505** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 12:16 pm

the porsche has a low level writing noise, nothing like the D2 however, which is driving me round the bend.

sounds like i will have to update the powerbook, maybe next year....

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Firewire 400 vs 800

Firewire 400 vs 800

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Re: G4 FW bus

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