ttir wrote: http://www.musician…

I've been reading reviews on this thing it sounds awesome. One thing that i would like to for sure is if i hook this up directly to the firewire port on my motherboard or the firewire on my soundcard? I'm thinking the motherboard but can anyone confirm this?

Mother Board. Dont even bring your old soundcard into play when your doing audio another interface.

I second slowjett's response.

I used to own a presonus firestation, and there were documented problems with users trying to interface the unit with a firewire port on the soundblaster series. I'm assuming that's what you're talking about.

fwiw, they even recommended purchasing a separate pci firewire card, as in their tests it had yielded a better transfer rate than onboard firewire. Honestly, this might (and probably) won't make much of a difference in how the firepod works for you, but still it could be an option if you find your onboard firewire not working too well for you.

-eric.

I'm looking into getting a firepod too. I had a question though.. I'm mainly buying it for the extra preamps and I will use a MOTU 896HD as the main interface. Will I be able to use both units with Digital Performer or Cubase SX at the same time, giving me 18 preamps simultaneously?

the firepod would probably not be the best fit for ya.

Last I remember it only has a stereo s/pdif out, which would only route 2 of your channels of audio. Your 896 HD should be able to take adat optical in. Actually, here it is

http://www.motu.com/products/motuaudio/896/overview.html/images/overview.jpg

so you'd probably be better off with a unit that has an adat optical interface to the 896 HD. Maybe look at the presonus digimax or focusrite octopre. I think those units would suffice.

-eric.

I knew it didn't have optical out, but it does have 8 analog outs, which i can run through my A/D converter and then lightpipe it into the 896, but i was wondering if i'd be able to hook the firepod up to another firewire port on the computer and use it as a second interface completely seperate from the 896. i just didn't know if the software would let me use them both at the same time.

The problems everyone has talked about mainly dealt with the old firestation. That unit used mLan which Presonus abandoned because of the problems.

I haven't heard any complaints with the new firepod.