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does firewire cable length affect anything

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Submitted by malamikigo on

I connect my PreSonus firepod to my powerbook via firewire, of course. The way my desk is setup though, it's a bit of an inconvenience with the firewire cord only being about 3 feet long. Just wondering, if i went up to an 8 foot or so firewire cable, will i experience any negative side effects?



Note that i also run my 500gb external hard drive daisy-chained with the firepod, and that most of my sessions are run off the external. I know it can sometimes be recommended to transfer the sessions onto the computer's hard drive to work on them, but i haven't had any troubles in the past running things as i have.



so. .what of a longer firewire cord?

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Link555

I don’t think you will have any problem going from 3ft to 8 feet.



Simply put the longer the cable the greater the chance of data packets getting corrupted by RF inference, or slew issues.



However most firewire the difference between 3ft and 8ft will be small.



Keep in my the digital data streams traveling down the firewire copper are running much faster then serial communications



Firewire 400-transfer rates up to 393 MBit/second.



Firewire 800- transfer rates up to 786 MBit/second.



USB 2.0 Hi speed- 1.5, 12, and 320 MBit/second.



The faster they run the easier it is for them to get corrupted by difference in wire impedance. The wire acts like an RC circuit which effectively distort the data waveform. Look at the picture on the link below:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slew_rate



There is a reason most cables are less than 15 feet.



Long story short you should be fine.

Thu, 02/28/2008 - 10:45 Permalink