Thinking of new Imac - a couple of questions

[dryjoy]

I am still using my 400 MHz Powermac G4 & Emagic Logic Platinum 4.7 with MOTU 2408 MK II & PCI 324 + AMT8 MIDI. I got it new in 2000, and it's given me amazing service - sounds great and is unbelievably stable and reliable - but I know it too well and I think it's finally time for an upgrade.
I can't afford a Macpro these days, so I'm looking at an Imac, and I'll need a new Audio Interface.

The first system I was going to get was:

Option 1 2.66 Ghz Imac, with a FW800 HD for external audio, daisychained to a MOTU Ultralite Mk3

but it's occurred to me that the Ultralite Mk3 might be a bit over spec'd for what I do, I chose it because although I have a MOTU 2408 MkII at the moment but I hardly, if ever, need all 8 analogue ins & outs.

So

Option 2 is a 2.93 Ghz Imac, with a FW 800 HD and an M-Audio Fast Track Ultra USB 2.0 audio interface, which still gives 6 analogue ins & outs

The thing is, I am suspicious of USB 2.0 audio for some reason, but I wondered if spreading the load across the FW & USB busses might be a safer bet, and it would allow the HD to use the full bandwidth of FW800.

If anyone has any thoughts or opinions about whether Option 1 or 2 might be better, I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks

 

[Drumjim85]

i would be cautious of daisy-chaining 2 critical pieces of hardware like that. Although you can never go too "over spec'd".

as for the USB, all the usb mbox.s use usb1. And they are very reliable. I don't see anything wrong with using USB for an audio interface. Although firewire is preferred.

 

[ChrisA]

Audio uses about 1.5Mbps per channel. FW800 has a total of 8000Mbps. I don't think you have to worry to much about a handfull of audio using up the available bandwidth of a FW800 bus.

Let's put it another way. is a lot faster then the physical speed of a hard disk. Disks can't write at 100 megabits per second. The FW800 bus a bit over spec'd for you needs