EXS 24 Logic Sampler Users Group

From: Sean McCoy <osr@...>

>Is anybody having any problems with the use of external firewire drives for
>disk streaming? My internal drives are rapidly filling with converted
>sample libraries, and firewire is the obvious way to go if it can handle
>it. I'm using a G4 450MP on Mac OS 9.2.2 (for another six months or so,
>anyway). Thanks for any recommendations.

I'm getting 180 stereo voices off a single 120GB FW drive, so there 
aren't any innate problems. But the dual 450 is from the early 
Firewire days, so I'd do some research (some Mac forum somewhere?) on 
whether there are any problems with its implementation that could get 
in the way.

Just make sure not to listen to the stupid computer specs that people 
will throw at you, no matter how intelligent it makes the person 
quoting them sound. 99% of the time they're totally irrelevant!
-- 

Nick Batzdorf
818/905-9101, cell 590-9101, fax 905-5434

--- In exs-users@yahoogroups.com, Nick Batzdorf <recording@e...> wrote:

> 
> I'm getting 180 stereo voices off a single 120GB FW drive, so there 
> aren't any innate problems. 

Nick

are you sure you aren't dropping data when streaming with firewire?  in my testing, 
i've found that all drives (ata, scsi) will appear to playback as many voices as your CPU 
can handle.  but the slower the drive, the more they have to drop data to do it.  

logic/EXS doesn't warn you that data has been dropped.  but if you keep the EXS 
Virtual Memory panel open, you can see a figure for dropped sample data.

i've personally found that ATA/100 drives in oxford911 firewire cases can stream 
about 110 stereo voices before dropping data.

anyway, just wanted to mention it. 

cheers

>"ATA/100 drives in oxford911 firewire"  

I've never heard of these drives.  Who manufactures them?

=====


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> -----Original Message-----
> From: J-Mac! [mailto:fingers4u2_98@...] 
> Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 3:39 PM
> To: exs-users@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [EXS] Re: Firewire disks for streaming
> 
> 
> >"ATA/100 drives in oxford911 firewire"
> 
> I've never heard of these drives.  Who manufactures them?
> 
> =====


Umm you buy an ATA/100 drive and put it in a firewire case.
I doubt anyones using anything other than the Oxford chip nowadays in their
enclosures.

Chris
--
http://www.descentrecords.com
http://www.towelhead.net
http://www.mp3.com/stemcellvirus

On Mon, Jul 28, 2003 at 03:39:27PM -0700, J-Mac! wrote:
> >"ATA/100 drives in oxford911 firewire"  
> 
> I've never heard of these drives.  Who manufactures them?

they've got an ad in the last _tape-op_ (which reviews the dave smith
instruments "evolver" and ableton "live" 2.0)

they usedto use IBM drives, but i dunno what they use now:

http://tinyurl.com/ic1f
http://tinyurl.com/ic1c

-- 
yours,
niall.
.. .  .   .    .     .       .           .             .                 .
aleph null.                             a simple insinuation around silence.
see: http://www.vietnambla.com          hear: http://radio.vietnambla.com

.. .radio.free.destruktobot. ..
playing now:  talking heads - drugs - this mortal coil: orginal versions

I wrote:

>  > I'm getting 180 stereo voices off a single 120GB FW drive, so there
>  > aren't any innate problems.

  From: "stupid8track" <maxmoss@...>

>are you sure you aren't dropping data when streaming with firewire? 
>in my testing,
>i've found that all drives (ata, scsi) will appear to playback as 
>many voices as your CPU
>can handle.  but the slower the drive, the more they have to drop 
>data to do it.\ufffd
>
>logic/EXS doesn't warn you that data has been dropped.  but if you 
>keep the EXS
>Virtual Memory panel open, you can see a figure for dropped sample data.
>
>i've personally found that ATA/100 drives in oxford911 firewire 
>cases can stream
>about 110 stereo voices before dropping data.

I'm not sure, and maybe I'll repeat the test someday with that window 
open, although CM from VSL thinks I probably just have most of the 
data on the fast part of the drive.

In any case, I think that Firewire's bandwidth shouldn't be an issue, 
i.e. you'd probably get the same result with the drive mounted 
internally.

What could be an issue - and maybe I should have mentioned this - is 
that not all Firewire drives work 100% reliably in Pro Tools, so as a 
matter of course I move some of the tracks to the internal drive just 
to cut off any problems at the pass. You'll be going along fine, and 
then all of a sudden you'll get "disk too slow or fragmented" 
messages, when it's neither; moving tracks over is the only way to 
get it to be happy. I haven't experienced this with the EXS24 
streaming voices, but it could happen.
-- 

Nick Batzdorf
818/905-9101, cell 590-9101, fax 905-5434