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I want to purchase a macbook, which has only one firewire port. I know that 5400 RPM hard drive speed is a little slow for recording, so I want the firewire port free for an external hard drive. I also want to buy a TC electronic Konnekt 8, which is a firewire device. I think it's possible to connect my bass to the konnekt 8, and then connect the konnekt 8 to the macbook's audio line in port using an audio cable. Will this yield results as good as just firewire? will there be more lag?

Comments

Cucco Mon, 09/03/2007 - 18:42

It will add:

- Noise
- Distortion (not the good kind)
- Conversion steps, which in addition to the noise and the distortion just mentioned, it would add even more noise and distortion.

It will take away:

- Headroom
- Resolution
- channel count (for individual control at least)

In other words...
Bad idea.

Besides, the Konnekt 8 has 2 firewire ports. 1 is the output to the computer and the other will allow you to plug in your hard drive and work both devices simultaneously. The PCI/Firewire bus on the Macbook should be able to handle this with no problem.

Cheers -

J.

gdoubleyou Thu, 09/06/2007 - 15:49

I used a MOTU 828, daisy-chained to a firewire drive, for sevral years on a 1GHz Powerbook with no problems.

Firewire 400 is fast enough, USB has to managed by your cpu, and doesn't have as high of a sustained data rate.

You will need at least some sort of preamp for Low level signals that bass and guitars produce.

8-) 8)