Some hypothetical questions

[charraig]

Hi there. I've just joined, this looks like a great forum to be a part of.

I've been doing some research and am thinking about buying the new Avid MBox Pro. I see that that has Firewire 400 connections. At the moment my laptop has a IEEE 1394a connection. Would that do to run ProTools LE? Do I just need a cable to convert FW400 port to 1394a. I see that the 1394 is not a powered port, so would the Mbox Pro have to be plugged into the mains?

I'm thinking about upgrading to a MacBook Pro i7 when I can afford to do so, but I've seen a lot of posts about connection errors due to the new MacBooks having Firewire 800 ports.

To summarise what I have read I see that I would either need a conversion cable from FW800 to FW400 to run the MBox Pro. Either that, or use an external hard drive with both FW800 and 400 ports as a go between my mac and my mbox.

Am I correct in all that I've said so far, does anyone have any experience with what I've said? I wanted to ask also, if the older macbook pro's which have the firewire 400 would be better, although they only have intel core due processors? Any suggestions?

Thanks,

charraig

[albee1952]

The mini(4 pin) firewire port on your laptop may work just fine(but yes, you will need to plug in the Mbox 2 Pro to mains power). It will depend on whether the firewire controller(inside the computer) is compatible(TI chips are king here). Also, your firewire drive must use an Oxford 9xx chipset(Glyph, OWC and Lacie do, as do some others). Your best bet is to use a firewire drive with dual FW400 ports(the OWC Mercury drives are very good and can be bought in this configuration). As for the Mac Book, they are fine machines and that would be where you would use an FW800 to FW400 adapter cable(the preferred setup is computer>firewire drive>interface).

BTW, the Glyph drives are probably tops in quality, but are most expensive. The Lacie are cheap, but you get what you pay for. The OWC strikes the best balance of quality vs. price(IMHO).

Your best performance vs. price on a computer will be to build a PC. A killer i7 rig can be done for around $1,000 to $1,200 and it will stomp any laptop(Mac or PC).