Firewire – a technology whose time is coming. “I was thinking of getting a SCSI card and hard drive for digital audio, but I am wondering if Firewire drives might possibly be usable for audio either now or in the near future? What about firewire adaptors for the slightly older G3 Macs?”
Firewire drives and cards are available now. More configurations are coming out every week. None of them are approved for digital audio applications at this time so we can’t recommend them, but the technology looks like it will be the first real solution (improvement) to the quagmire of SCSI we’ve dealt with over the years. As for what to buy, if possible I would wait another six months until some of the manufacturers of digital audio systems have had a chance to do proper testing. Specific recommendations will emerge from that testing. There are PCI cards available that have both SCSI and Firewire on them. If you plan to try Firewire in the future that may be the way to go. As we have said before, you should definitely talk to your Sweetwater Sales Engineer about your specific set up and intentions prior to making any decisions.