Here'smynsetup

Mac Dual 2GHZ G5
1Gb RAM
Waves Diamond, Masters, Restoration, Transform
Altiverb
Cubase SL
Groove Agent
Stylus RMX
Amplitube Live

All simple, runs like a dream, except occasional Firewire issues with the Edirol FA301 which appears to disappear and reappear only after reboot or sometimes not even a reboot, I have to pull the plug out and put it back in, for no good reason.

The other issue is latency. While its not an issue for me, if guys want reverb in the phones I have a dedicated mixer and outboard reverb, I recorded a hip hop vocal over preprepared backing on Tuesday, and what wasn't preprepared was my reaction to the delay on the vocals hitting the drive.

I do loads of singers with backing tracks, to my shame, and have never noticed this before, but I guess the rapping is just so rhythmical that you are gonna notice it more. I had to pull everything back 3ms or so from memory. Maybe a lot more. 0.0.0.030 on the Cubase meters. I think I am getting 14ms latency on the Edirol so in and back again gives 30ms doesn't it! - hellish.

I am well aware that the Edirol is a piece of cr*p and am gonna buy a Fireface in the next few days.

But that incident got me worrying. Am I gonna have the same Firewire issues? Am I gonna have the same latency issues anyway?

Does this mean I would be better getting the DAW sorted and using the Adjust for Record Latency function in Cubase? and skip the fireface?

As far as I am concerned I am doing everything right and its just the Edirol that lets me down.

Lower Latency, Multi Processing and audio priority set to very high are all ticked in the VST Multitrack control panel, plus a third box I can't remember.

Anybody got any thoughts? Thanks in advance