Mbox2Pro through LaCie Rugged Triple

[Martimeus]

I was hoping to be able to run my Mbox as a slave off of the second firewire port on my LaCie Rugged Triple, as my iMac has only one firewire port. But when I try this I get a buffer underrun error whenever I try to playback audio in Pro Tools (9), regardless of what HW buffersize setting i use. System audio out through the Mbox works fine with this setup.

Is there any way to make this setup work, or is it a lost cause?

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Martimeus

I was hoping to be able to run my Mbox as a slave off of the second firewire port on my LaCie Rugged Triple, as my iMac has only one firewire port. But when I try this I get a buffer underrun error whenever I try to playback audio in Pro Tools (9), regardless of what HW buffersize setting i use. System audio out through the Mbox works fine with this setup.

Is there any way to make this setup work, or is it a lost cause?

Missing lots of info here.

To start with what *exact* drive do you have? The Rugged Triple is available as a 5,400 rpm drive (500GB or 1TB) or a 7,200 rpm drive (500GB). If you have a 5,400 rpm drive, that is not close to meeting the Pro Tools disk requirements and you should give up now and replace it with a 7,200 rpm drive.

And what exact iMac do you have. If it has Thunderbolt then a very good thing to do is grab an Apple Thunderbolt to FW800 adapter and use that to get separate Firewire buses for the disk and the interface.

And if it is a 7,200 rpm drive have you tried putting the drive after the interface? And what exact adapter cables and/or separate adapters are you using. Sometimes this comes down to an adapter or cable, test those separately if you can.

And have *all* other standard Mac systems optimizations been done, especially disabling spotlight indexing (start by setting every disks as private (aka not indexed)) and Time Machine backup on this drive.

Darryl

[jbrown7282]

Originally Posted by Martimeus

I was hoping to be able to run my Mbox as a slave off of the second firewire port on my LaCie Rugged Triple, as my iMac has only one firewire port. But when I try this I get a buffer underrun error whenever I try to playback audio in Pro Tools (9), regardless of what HW buffersize setting i use. System audio out through the Mbox works fine with this setup.

Is there any way to make this setup work, or is it a lost cause?

There would be a problem.... The bandwidth is prob not sufficient to support this set up....You would want the MBox first.....and since the mbox only has that one port you would need to find another way to connect your Lacie....

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by jbrown7282

There would be a problem.... The bandwidth is prob not sufficient to support this set up....You would want the MBox first.....and since the mbox only has that one port you would need to find another way to connect your Lacie....

Ah, no the Mbox2 Pro has two Firewire 400 Ports.

And this is not likely a pure bandwidth spec issue, these problems are much more to do with subtle latency things.

First question is just what spec drive is being used. And a useful test may be to just try recording with Pro Tools to the system drive (hopefully its 7,200 rpm or an SSD) and see if that works at all for a very simple session, just to exclude other problems. Not for production use, just as a test.

Darryl

[Martimeus]

Thanks for quick replies guys!
Ok, so this is a 500GB 5400rpm disk.
My math told me that firewire 800 wasn't capable of transfering data at the same rate as the disc read capability anyway, so I figured it wouldnt matter. Guess my math was wrong then.
I'm running a pro tools session together with apple ProRes 422 1080 25p video from this disc on a Mac Pro at school. Havent had any problems with that yet.

The disc is now connected to my iMac11,3 (no thunderbolt) through a FW800 - FW800 cable and then a FW800 - FW400 from the disk to my mBox. (the mBox has 2 x FW400)

Anyway the problem is there if I load a session located on my iMacs internal drive aswell, aslong as the mbox is connected through the lacie.

Seems to me that its a problem with the FW "hub" in the lacie, but I dont know.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Martimeus

Thanks for quick replies guys!
Ok, so this is a 500GB 5400rpm disk.
My math told me that firewire 800 wasn't capable of transfering data at the same rate as the disc read capability anyway, so I figured it wouldnt matter. Guess my math was wrong then.
I'm running a pro tools session together with apple ProRes 422 1080 25p video from this disc on a Mac Pro at school. Havent had any problems with that yet.

The disc is now connected to my iMac11,3 (no thunderbolt) through a FW800 - FW800 cable and then a FW800 - FW400 from the disk to my mBox. (the mBox has 2 x FW400)

Anyway the problem is there if I load a session located on my iMacs internal drive aswell, aslong as the mbox is connected through the lacie.

Seems to me that its a problem with the FW "hub" in the lacie, but I dont know.

Nope big mistake on that drive. Seriously give up with it now, you need to be using a 7,200 rpm drive or an SSD drive. That is, and has been for a long time, the base disk requirement for Pro Tools. Hopefully you can return the drive. Try also to troubleshoot those cables and adapters if you have trouble in future. be careful of random no-brand cables. Have some spare reputable brand cables that you can test with. As one data point I really like the Sonnet FW400 to 800 adapter. (http://www.amazon.com/Sonnet-FireWir.../dp/B0000CDJPQ)and have seen similar but cheaper copies just not work reliably.

Are you trying to run video off this drive or the iMac system disk as well on your iMac, or just audio? And are you using a very simple session to test with, what sample rate?, a few tracks and no plugins? Or try to describe what is in the session.

If you had Thunderbolt I'd be looking at SSD drives, but FW800 SSD options are more limited. Maybe folks here have recommendations.

What exact model/spec drive is in the iMac now?

Is Spotlight and Time Machine disabled? All other optimizations done? These can absolutely kill disk performance/cause all sorts of problems.

You are getting lucky running the video off your Audio disk, you should not be doing that.

Darryl

[jbrown7282]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Ah, no the Mbox2 Pro has two Firewire 400 Ports.

And this is not likely a pure bandwidth spec issue, these problems are much more to do with subtle latency things.

First question is just what spec drive is being used. And a useful test may be to just try recording with Pro Tools to the system drive (hopefully its 7,200 rpm or an SSD) and see if that works at all for a very simple session, just to exclude other problems. Not for production use, just as a test.

Darryl

Ahh Your right about that..... 2 port thing.... What I would have is to switch the interface to the first in the FW chain.... but since the drive is 5400 RPM... that is most likely the cause.... Thats why I should not try to answer questions while im in a session.... LOL.... HAHAHA

[Martimeus]

Hmm.. Hope I can return it too. I guess I was a little quick on the trigger on ordering it, as the site I got it from dont have the 7200 rpm version.
The internal disk in my imac is a 1TB Western Digital Caviar @7200 rpm(WDC WD1001FALS-40Y6A0).
OSx is running on a 120GB Corsair Force 3 SSD

[jbrown7282]

Originally Posted by Martimeus

Hmm.. Hope I can return it too. I guess I was a little quick on the trigger on ordering it, as the site I got it from dont have the 7200 rpm version.
The internal disk in my imac is a 1TB Western Digital Caviar @7200 rpm(WDC WD1001FALS-40Y6A0).
OSx is running on a 120GB Corsair Force 3 SSD

Run a session off of that WD...with your interface and see if that does not give you a smooth run... :)

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Martimeus

Hmm.. Hope I can return it too. I guess I was a little quick on the trigger on ordering it, as the site I got it from dont have the 7200 rpm version.
The internal disk in my imac is a 1TB Western Digital Caviar @7200 rpm(WDC WD1001FALS-40Y6A0).
OSx is running on a 120GB Corsair Force 3 SSD

So you a WD Caviar Black and an boot/system SSD in the iMac. What is on the Caviar Black? The Black are fantastic audio drives. You absolutely should be able to put your sessions on there as long as its not being simultaneously used for video or VI samples or something else. If you need to move stuff to school you can later drag and drop sessions onto an external drive, you don't need to work from the external drive on the iMac.

I'll ask the optimization question a third time...

I'm starting to assume you are not understanding this question. Start at the "Help us Help You - READ THIS Before Posting!" link on this page and make sure **every last one** of the optimizations for your OS X version described in the links there have been done. You may be able to back some of them out if you need to after the system is totally stable. And to start with I would disable spotlight indexing on all drives not just the audio drive.

Darryl