Ideal Powerbook Setup? Options

[lmarcus]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking to get started doing some live-instrument multitracking on my 1.33ghz 12" Powerbook. I have a Tascam US-122, but I'm getting rid of it because the latency is too apparent. I guess this means I'm looking at firewire, so I've been considering getting a PreSonus Firebox, as I've read bad things about M-Audio's comparable 410.

Does anyone have any other suggestions or thoughts on this setup? I'm looking to spend around $300 but I could go higher if there were a compelling reason. I need to be able to record at least two tracks at once. I've seen firewire interfaces that have integrated mixers - are these always very expensive?

Thanks in advance.

[lepetitmartien]

You need:

- a decent amount of RAM (ideal is higher than 1GB, depends of your plug-in/virtual instrument/sampler set up)
- an external FW hard drive (FW 400 is just fine) for audio files (the internal drive will not like the job if you ask for system + virtual memory + apps + audio at the same time, it can work on a few tracks, but you'll hit the ceiling fast)
- for the best performance, a PCMCIA card for a dedicated FW port for the hard drive is a good idea (you sure can do without, we're talking ideal

I let our FW interfaces specialist for the shoot out