audio firewire devices and Vegas5

dwhopson wrote on 5/31/2004, 3:10 PM
Hi,

Is anyone here using audio firewire devices with Vegas? If so...what are you using, and how is the stability of the device, drivers, and overall system.

I know there have been some issues in the past with firewire devices in general, but am now wondering if these issues are starting to be sorted out.

I'm doing a lot of classical location recording and am looking to start recording more than 2 tracks at a time. I work with a notebook and thus don't have any access to a PCI slot.....

Any thoughts, suggestions, and experiences would be appreciated!

thanks,
dwh

Comments

farss wrote on 5/31/2004, 4:17 PM
I have the M-Audio Firewire 410 audio device and the Canopus ADVC-300 living together with Vegas 5. No real issues.
Needed to get the latest M-Audio drivers and it sings happily using all ASIO. Do need to have them all connected and on before starting Vegas or it may fail to see the 300 but apart from that seems to work beautifully.
Main reason I bought the 410 was to use it with a laptop as a field recorder, still haven't founf a need for it as such so it lives on my edit system where it has done sterling service recording VOs.
One thing with laptops, they mostly only have 4 pin firewire ports so you'd need to power the 410 seperately.
Newf wrote on 6/1/2004, 3:40 AM
I as well use the Firewire 410. Worked great with V2 and am in the process of testing it with V5. Very smooth with Asio. Also advertises zero latency direct hardware monitoring besides low latency monitoring with Asio 2 however I have yet to try this feature: manual suggests this is useful when tracks build up and latency increases proportionately with software monitoring. Also has 2 firewire ports the 2nd of which can accept a DV camera or a 2nd F410. Can be powered directly from laptop using 6-pin Firewire PCMCIA slot card. As well of interest, at least to me, is the ability to route software outputs from Reason via spdif
and 2 analog outs with cabling around the back of card into the respective spdif in and the 2 analog ins to achieve 4 channels of noise free "Rewire" into Vegas.

Other Firewire products from M-Audio include Firewire Audiophile and the new Firewire 18/14(8 channels Lightpipe, 2 spdif in and out, 8 analog in and 4 analog out in a device no larger than the F410). These two products I have no experience with.

Other Firewire products I have seen advertised but never used include Motu 828mk2(supposedly can virtually "Rewire" tracks of Reason into Vegas but this is just what I have heard and subject to testing).

As well from Motu is the expensive 896HD ~1300.00 US. The MOTU products are as well ,from reports, first rate.

Digidesign makes at least two Firewire devices but of these I have no first hand experience.

As well dont overlook PCMCIA cards from manufacturers such as Echo Audio as this is at least as efficient a specification as Firewire and Echo gets consistently rave reviews on this board.

dwhopson wrote on 6/1/2004, 9:07 AM
I'm looking for 8 channels of I/0 right now. I think that will do everything I ever need to do in classical-land. I actually have a pretty hefty commerical project coming up that will have to be multitracked due to instrumentation and ensemble setup in the hall I'm in.

I've heard nothing but good things about MOTU devices.....they have had a decent/loyal following for years.

Echo sort of scares me right now. I've heard nothing but good things about their products with Sony software.......but with other software there have been reported issues. And at the moment, I'm not sure I will be running soley Sony apps......so there is something to think about there.

Thanks for the input so far....it's good to hear that firewire is finally working itself out on the audio side of things.

Thanks,
dwh