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    FireWire

    Discussion in 'ASUS Gaming Notebook Forum' started by 1954bassman, Jun 14, 2012.

  1. 1954bassman

    1954bassman Newbie

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    Is it possible to have a firewire port installed on a G73 series laptop?
     
    1954bassman, Jun 14, 2012
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  2. ALLurGroceries

    ALLurGroceries  Vegan Vermin Super Moderator

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    No. I've been down this road. It doesn't have an expresscard port and there is no viable mini-pcie firewire card to replace the wifi card with.
     
    ALLurGroceries, Jun 14, 2012
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  3. KCETech1

    KCETech1 Notebook Prophet

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    excluding business laptops and older AW's not much has firewire OR expresscards anymore, by your username OP im guessing needed for an old audio interface?
     
    KCETech1, Jun 14, 2012
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  4. 1954bassman

    1954bassman Newbie

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    say it ain't so....shucks
     
    1954bassman, Jun 14, 2012
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  5. KCETech1

    KCETech1 Notebook Prophet

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    its so my friend. even Apple has dumped expresscards and firewire. ( unless you get a TB-FW adaptor and like introducing lag )
     
    KCETech1, Jun 14, 2012
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  6. ALLurGroceries

    ALLurGroceries  Vegan Vermin Super Moderator

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    Old audio interface? How about every pro audio interface under the sun that isn't PCIe based.. :rolleyes:
     
    ALLurGroceries, Jun 14, 2012
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  7. KCETech1

    KCETech1 Notebook Prophet

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    sorry, there was some sarcasm in there too. I work in the AV field and thats why 75% of our audio engineers etc run Elitebooks and Thinkpads.... expresscard slots to shove in TI firewire cards, like I said in post 3, business class has or will take them. I did find out some of the Sager/Clevos have them still
     
    KCETech1, Jun 14, 2012
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  8. 1954bassman

    1954bassman Newbie

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    Actually, I am buying a brand new Personus StudioLive:

    PreSonus

    Don't ask me why it has Firewire. I bought the ASUS about one year ago just for Protools 9, and now the Presonus has a Firewire port on it.

    I am not very computer savvy, so please forgive my ignorance. I am in a smallish NC town, and I am basically at the mercy of Best Buy. I do have a guy that does repair work on my PCs when they act up that is pretty good.

    So I guess there is no way I am going to hook my new mixer into my ASUS laptop?

    Oh, and thanks for your help BTW.
     
    1954bassman, Jun 14, 2012
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  9. KCETech1

    KCETech1 Notebook Prophet

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    Sorry, but the answer is ... nope no firewire.

    one of our audio guys went with mackie USB units
     
    KCETech1, Jun 14, 2012
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  10. ALLurGroceries

    ALLurGroceries  Vegan Vermin Super Moderator

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    It has firewire because it is industry standard. All pro audio gear uses firewire or pci express.

    Depending on how many tracks you are looking to record and play back simultaneously, USB may suffice, however it is a suboptimal solution and is going to be consumer grade hardware. USB latency is higher than firewire for multitracking, and it is a less reliable protocol for audio -- use it only as a last resort.
     
    ALLurGroceries, Jun 14, 2012
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  11. 1954bassman

    1954bassman Newbie

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    No words for how I feel right now. This is not good for me. dangit.

    plus the L is acting up on my keyboard...great...

    How / where would I shop for a laptop with firewire?
     
    1954bassman, Jun 14, 2012
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  12. ALLurGroceries

    ALLurGroceries  Vegan Vermin Super Moderator

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    It is getting harder to find laptops with firewire, it's called IEEE 1394 on PCs, firewire is the term for Apple, but it's the same thing.

    Anything with a 1394 port will do, most laptops that have it use the 4-pin version which looks a bit different and carries no power, but that is not of concern as long as you have an AC adapter for your audio interface. You can get a 4-pin to 6-pin firewire cable and have no problems. 4-pin firewire can also be called i.link.

    Anything with an expresscard slot will also work. I use a firewire expresscard in my lenovo x220 with a focusrite interface.

    Beyond that, the biggest concern for a laptop for audio is DPC latency. Try and find the numbers for the models you look at, or ask for them here in an owners thread or forum. You could also run a DPC latency checker if you get to test out any machine before you buy it: http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

    Make sure to try it on battery power and with wifi off. Running on battery increases the frequency of ACPI activity on the machine and also triggers lower power states which lower overall performance for the sake of longer battery life.

    Wifi is basically incompatible with low latency audio, so that is why you should turn wireless off when testing DPC latency, unless you plan on recording with wifi on for some reason.
     
    ALLurGroceries, Jun 14, 2012
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  13. 1954bassman

    1954bassman Newbie

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    1954bassman, Jun 14, 2012
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  14. ALLurGroceries

    ALLurGroceries  Vegan Vermin Super Moderator

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    No, that has a firewire port but there is no way to do firewire to USB.

    And don't be fooled by firewire to usb cables, those are only for dumping video from certain DV cameras.
     
    ALLurGroceries, Jun 14, 2012
    #14
  15. Syndrome

    Syndrome Torque Matters

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    Yeah its pretty pathetic how there is no form of expansion on the G73(for JH owners like me then that means no USB 3.0 expansion either). I used to use a Echo AudioFire 2 for my audio and when I 'upgraded' to the G73 I had to find another option, and honestly there isn't much USB based that competes with it.
     
    Syndrome, Jun 15, 2012
    #15