Archetype Posted March 22, 2011 Share Posted March 22, 2011 The biggest issue is more sustained bandwidth from USB. It would handle the inputs but running with outputs would have a big delay on them. Plus add an external drive as internal laptops won't keep up. I would suggest 3 things at this point. 1- use the USB which is limited, or FireWire with lower spec. Or 2 interfaces. 2- sell the 2 laptops and upgrade 3- forget the interface and get a portastudio device. 3 would Probably be the best route as you can record and transfer to the laptop to edit and mix. I think some double as a USB interface too. G Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thisnameistaken Posted March 22, 2011 Share Posted March 22, 2011 (edited) TBH the 'better' ones are often offering numerous tracks at high bitrates that you will probably not even want/need. The other thing you pay for in quality interfaces is good preamps, but it's OK to pay more for quality preamps, it doesn't affect the amount of data you will be streaming over the interface. I never record at over 44.1k 24-bit, and my 4-year-old Core2Duo could easily manage 16 simultaneous tracks of that over firewire 400 to its decidedly average SATA drive. I would imagine a USB interface can hack it for 8 tracks, and frankly I'd be surprised if it couldn't do 16. I packed up my mactop and my M-Audio FW1814 today to go record a trombonist who'd offered to do some tracks on our next EP. His band have done 3 studio albums and he actually said we'd got a warmer more natural sound than he usually gets in the studio, he looked pretty chuffed with it. This was recording at his house with my el-cheapo mobile studio and a bog-standard Rode NT1A, and I am not an especially experienced or talented recordist. Point being: Don't worry so much about gear looking cheap, home recording gear simply is cheap these days and you can get a lot of mileage out of it. Edited March 22, 2011 by thisnameistaken Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redstriper Posted March 22, 2011 Share Posted March 22, 2011 [quote name='thebrig' post='1172324' date='Mar 22 2011, 05:14 PM']Judging by what most people say, it would seem that [u]firewire[/u] would give me better results. ............using [u]firewire[/u] on the [b]AMD Thurion 64 x2 with 4GB Ram[/b], the performance is not going to be great, especially as I need to record at least 8 tracks at once.[/quote] Why not - my 4 year old Toshiba laptop is not high spec with only 1GB Ram and it records 16 tracks at once easily. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bankai Posted March 23, 2011 Share Posted March 23, 2011 Firewire really is the only way to go. And IMO the Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 is the way to go about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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