Separate drives for samples and audio files..?

Question

Hello all
I am moving to Macbook Pro (previous gen) with Logic Studio after years of PC (feel like I’m standing on the edge of a precipice staring anxiously down!). Will be looking to use it live in our 3-piece band to run existing MIDI Files and live triggered BFD drum samples
Have decided on getting an Echo AudioFire 8 to handle the necessary Audio outs and MIDI connections and will be replacing our rather dated Korg 05R/W General MIDI module with virtual instruments / samples libraries
I am thinking that once the Bass (probably Orange Tree CoreBass samples through Kontakt 3) and Orchestration (still wide open to suggestions on that!) are done, they’ll be exported as Audio files or perhaps ‘frozen’ in Logic to ease the load on real-time processing
Here’s the query then:
*Assuming that the internal drive will be for OS and programs only, will having the sample libraries and exported audio song files on separate physical drives from each other pay dividends – particularly when considering that the audio tracks (probably no more than two or three stereo files) will be streaming whilst BFD is triggering live samples via MIDI input..? I’m wondering if the samples and audio separate drives situation will be considerable beneficial, or given the intended application, would this approach be merely over-speccing things?*
If that is thought to be the best approach, what do you believe to be the best way of hooking these up? I plan on using the FW400 port for the Echo AudioFire 8 and have ordered a Sonnet Express eSATA Card to hook up an external drive. Should any additional drive look to use the FW800 port or should I simply tag into the spare eSATA port on the Sonnet Express Card..? My concern with the latter is that a bottleneck would occur in the Express port and defeat the whole object
I would really appreciate any thoughts on this
Many thanks
Clive

Answer 1

My opinions:
If you're really only talking about 2-3 audio tracks per song, having them on a separate drive is not going to make that much difference. I'd recommend just using one drive for both audio and samples for now, you can always add another hard drive later if you're getting disk errors, or if you start using more audio tracks.
If you're looking for a good orchestral library, I recommend Vienna Symphonic Library Special Edition (about $500). VSL sounds great, and this particular set is much cheaper and still gives you a good amount of instruments/articulations.
If you do go with a third drive, use both eSATA ports. Even with a little bottlenecking, you should see substantially faster performance than with FW800. The data transfer rate of eSATA is over 3 times that of FW800.
Message was edited by: jdredge