Can I connect a Mac and PC with a single USB cable to send files between the two?

Never tried it, but some say its dangerous? - Do I need a special cable/USB for this?

My network cable drops sometimes at 100mbps, but USB2 is so much faster. Even better can you record audio via USB cable as if it was a soundcard say on each, and I could send audio out of USB as data to a connected PC via USB?

Long shot I know...

no

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www.Lozjackson.com

Quote Pitchfork:

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Can I connect a Mac and PC with a single USB cable to send files between the two?

Never tried it, but some say its dangerous? - Do I need a special cable/USB for this?

My network cable drops sometimes at 100mbps, but USB2 is so much faster. Even better can you record audio via USB cable as if it was a soundcard say on each, and I could send audio out of USB as data to a connected PC via USB?

Long shot I know...

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Firewire used to work extremely well but support was dropped under windows 7. OSX handles it well though.

Get your network sorted for 1Gbps.

And that of course is exactly the way to do it. If your PC hasn't got an Ethernet port (pretty rare by now, I should have thought) Ethernet cards are as cheap as chips. Your Mac will have Ethernet, and the network will run at speeds that make both Firewire and USB look slow.

CC

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Put the fun back into dysfunctional.
Mr Punch's Studio

Quote ConcertinaChap:

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And that of course is exactly the way to do it. If your PC hasn't got an Ethernet port (pretty rare by now, I should have thought) Ethernet cards are as cheap as chips. Your Mac will have Ethernet, and the network will run at speeds that make both Firewire and USB look slow.

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Yes I have both Ethernet ports on PC and Mac and they switch files ok, but sometimes drop out, so got me thinking if FW or USB would be better?

Quote chris...:

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Get your network sorted for 1Gbps.

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How Chris? not great at all this stuff

I should point out that I'm on 10.7.3 OS X Lion and Windows XP Professional - so no Windows 7 or 8 for me..

I think you need to check your network connections. Dropouts in a working network are exceedingly rare, which is one of the reasons networking is normally much superior to other methods of file exchange like Firewire.

On the 1 Gb bit, I would guess that your Mac already has a 1 Gb Ethernet port. It's only recently that such things have appeared on PCs so if you haven't got a Gigabit port then you would need to fit a Gigabit network card to the PC. Personally, unless you do this sort of thing a fair bit (as I do), I wouldn't bother. The increased performance is only worth it if the network is a rate determining step for your workflow.

One other way of exchanging files, if both machines are connected to the Net, is to install Dropbox. This is quite slow as compared with Ethernet but the ease of use is amazing and very worth while. It's the normal way I exchange files between machines on my home network.

CC

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Put the fun back into dysfunctional.
Mr Punch's Studio

USB memory stick, if you only need to transfer occasionally.

Gigabit ethernet requires a CAT5E or CAT6 cable.

These are probably the cheapest cables you have in your studio (well, they should be) so if you have the wrong type, go out and buy some CAT5e.

The way to connect the two depends on your router / switch / modem. Nowadays, most routers supplied by internet providers have gigabit ethernet, but some older models might not.

A direct cable from one computer to the other works fine as well, but isolates you systems from the outside world as long as the transfer takes and it requires some manual configuration of ip-addresses and subnet etc. Not difficult, but it requires some basic knowledge of networking.

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