Connect External HD with USB or Firewire

[pumprdave]

I have a Mac Mini with Konnekt 8 DAC with Firewire connection. I am purchasing a G-Safe 2 TB drive system that mirrors two 2TB drives and can be connected to the Mac Mini via USB or Firewire.

 

I have two choices: Connect the G-Safe via USB and leave the Konnekt 8 DAC directly connected to the Mac Mini. OR: Connect the G-Safe to the Mac Mini via Firewire (4x faster than USB) and then connect the Konnekt 8 DAC Firewire to the G-Safe in a Daisy Chain?

 

Any ideas on which method would be best?

 

Many thanks,

David Levinson

Newport Beach, California

 

[Audio_ELF]

The general advise in situations like this would be to put the drive on the USB bus and the DAC/Interface on the FireWire. There should be no issue with daisychaining the drive then the Konnekt 8, but why worry when you have the other option.

 

Eloise

 

[pumprdave]

Any comments?

How does a Network (NAS) drive compare with a direct connected HD via USB or Firewire, or do they all work OK?

 

[Lizard_King]

David, Please see my post about how my new hard drive makes my sound so much better. I and telling you, use the Firewire port as that will use less of the CPU!

 

[Panelhead]

I have two FW dacs, and used to connect my drives daisy chained. Only one dac has two FW400 ports, so the other required connecting the drive in the middle.

Either way the audio engine is in the computer. From the drive to the computer to the dac requires daisey chaining.

I read where it is better to have the dac on one interface and external drives on another. So I rigged up all the drives with USB cables. This way the flow path is drive to computer to dac on FW.

Guess what, I cannot hear any difference. Sounds the same with the drives on USB as it does with them on FW.

But if the CPU load is less with all on FW I may switch back.

 

George

 

[Audio_ELF]

Daisy changing Firewire is all very well, you you need to be aware if you daisychain a FW800 drive via a FW400 DAC, you'll only get FW400 speeds over the complete bus. If you connect a FW400 DAC via a FW800 drive then the drive will be able to communicate with the computer at FW800 speeds while the DAC uses FW400 speeds.

 

There can also be incompatibilities between devices when they share a single FireWire connection via Daisy Chaining - though this is obvious rather than an issue of sound quality.

 

Metric Halo recently published TechNote #10: Demystifying FireWire and Interfaces which describes this much better than I can.

 

Eloise