Thunderbolt to firewire

[macman70]

Any of you guys have experience with these. I am considering a Haswell MacBook Air for my recording, I typically record over Firewire 800 to a 7200 rpm drive. Any thoughts on the Adapter, performance etc. I think it is not the right time to get the cMBP so a MBA or maybe 13" rMBP may be the way to go and use the TB to FW adapter to record to my Ext Drive. Or maybe with faster speed of USB 3, I can record to a USB 3 drive, again any experience, there are some cons over recording to FW drive I would imagine.

I have been on an older Mac mini 2Ghz dual core and been fine recording to FW drive but would like newer machine for some portability to support my mac mini.

I think the MBA would do me, maybe opt for the 256GB drive but my apps I use EZ drummer etc do not take up much space and the plugins I will be selective on installing on the MBA. Again, any experience with MBA for recording and mixing, I typically just stick to Reaper, Garageband and Logic 9.

 

[scaredpoet]

We're using thunderbolt to firewire on a our setups at work, where we have a lot of "legacy" DV cameras and hard drives running off firewire.

Speed and performance are great, but we did have an issue with a couple of setups where the device gets its power from Firewire. Most FW drives we've tried seem okay with the power coming from the Thunderbolt to FW setup, BUT, we've had one drive and one camera not power up. It looks like the current coming from the thunderbolt port isn't quite the same as a straight firewire connection.

So, if you have a device that wants maximum current draw, you aren't going to get it from the thunderbolt to firewire adapter.

The solution is to either use external power, or if you can't do that, either a Thunderbolt dock or the adapter with a Firewire repeater/hub, to properly power the finicky devices.

 

[Boyd01]

I use Logic on a 2011 13" MBA with 256gb SSD. It runs great; I do my recording directly to the SSD and do periodic housecleaning to either delete old files or archive them on an external drive.

Have not checked recently, but the Thunderbolt to Firewire converters used to be rather pricey. I ditched my old firewire interface when I got the MBA and got a USB interface (4 channel Akai EIE Pro) which meets my modest needs very well.

My MBA doesn't have USB3, so I'm using USB2. I recall there were some interface issues with USB3 when it was released on the 2012 models, but hopefully that has been sorted out by now.

 

[macman70]

Guys thank you very much for responses.

@Boyd01, I also read that others are recording to the SSD and I borrowed a MacBook Air off a friend and tried that using Garageband and it too worked great. So I like that approach makes it easier and more portable as u can plug in and record straight to the Hard drive on the MBA.

Thanks

 

[Bear]

Any of you guys have experience with these. I am considering a Haswell MacBook Air for my recording, I typically record over Firewire 800 to a 7200 rpm drive. Any thoughts on the Adapter, performance etc. I think it is not the right time to get the cMBP so a MBA or maybe 13" rMBP may be the way to go and use the TB to FW adapter to record to my Ext Drive. Or maybe with faster speed of USB 3, I can record to a USB 3 drive, again any experience, there are some cons over recording to FW drive I would imagine.
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I would recommend going with a USB 3.0 drive. It'll be faster that a firewire drive. And also require less things to connect.