How to connect Firewire Weiss 202 and Firewire HD

Ldworet,

You might consider using a USB hard drive. Conventional wisdom is to attach the DAC and EHD to different interfaces, DAC on USB and EHD on Firewire or visa versa. I am getting great results using USB EHDs on a MacMini 09' with a Wiess DAC202 and on an iMac 08' with a Metric Halo LIO8. This configuration dedicates the Firewire interface to your DAC and the cost of switching from Firewire to USB EHD is minimal when compared to your DAC investment.

Good Luck,

Greg

Both will work. Here I had to connect the DAC to the HD because the HD was Firewire 800. Give it a go either way, I doubt you will discern a difference.

I've found that SOME firewire hard drives do not daisy-chain in an ideal manner. For example, if the device that is at the beginning of the chain (i.e., connected directly to the computer) is not powered up, the other device(s) in the chain may or may not be visible to the computer. Also, if the device that is at the beginning of the chain is not turned on before the device(s) that are connected later in the chain, those other devices in some cases may never be detected by the computer, until power is recycled in the opposite sequence (although that experience is with Windows machines; Mac's may be better in that respect).

In general, firewire hard drives that are described as using an Oxford chipset are to be preferred.

Regards,
-- Al

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Some will argue that having the drive on a different bus than the DAC will sound better but you can daisy chain them if you wish. As is normally the case, there is no way to predict what will be "better" in your system. Try it various ways and decide for yourself.

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Thanks for all the terrific help.