Is firewire 400 important for recording and live performance on macbooks?

It all depends but keep in mind Apple still sells one model of the MacBook that has FireWire in it. Its just not aluminum but who cares, its the functionality thats important.

Lots of devices use USB 2.0 for recording although I prefer FireWire myself. If its MIDI syching you're fine with any model.

MatLane said:

Cheers man

Yeah i was thinking maybe i should try and get the MBP 17''


Just the cash wow!

Click to expand...

Maybe consider the bass model 2.4 MBP then, its more than ample firepower for recording music. The white plastic MB is still in production, alot cheaper and does the trick as well. Thats your best bang for your buck and is the only notebook still to have FW 400 however you'd have to live w/ a smaller screen.

Decisions, decisions...

I would think if you're using ableton in a live setting then latency would be a big concern. My understanding was the USB interfaces tend to have more latency problems, but I could be wrong. My only experience with USB equipment have been the mbox and mbox 2 and they were both pretty latent for live monitoring. We've been using a little tascam fireone for our ableton setup and it works ok, but its only got two ins and two outs, so depending on what all you'll be using ableton for you might think about that as well.

If you are only going to have a stereo pair input, USB2.0 is fine.

If you are looking to record something like 8+ tracks at once, you'll want firewire.