Pro Tools & firewire connections

[muhsdoc]

Hi.

I have a Macbook with 1 firewire 400 connection. I have a Protools Mbox 2 Pro (firewire), and a 1Tb external firewire 400/800 hard drive.
My question is:
I only have one firewire connection on my computer, yet I need to connect my firewire Mbox2 Pro AND External firewire hd in order to operate & store the data. Do I connect the Mbox Pro to the external hd, and the hd to the computer, or, the Mbox Pro to the computer, and the Hd to the Mbox?

 

[Dr_M0rph3us]

Hi muhsdoc,

The FireWire (IEEE1394) is a serial bus interface, that means that you can connect up to 63 devices in a tree topology (hierarchical network).

Theory left aside, it doesn't matter in what order you connect the devices - they will still function. The only difference is the self-id assignment (depth-first, post-order), but it doesn't affect the performance of the connected devices (that is done using a quality protocol defined at interface-level).

In an ideal world, you can install them anyhow. Still, I suppose that transmission quality for the external audio interface has priority, and reasoning that shortest-length + fewer connectors => smaller transfer impedance => better signal quality, I'd suggest the following setup: Firewire from Mac to Mbox, then from Mbox to external HDD.

Cheers.