The maximum cable length specified by the IEEE1394 standard is 4.5 meters. However, more recent tests have shown that certain high quality firewire cables can achieve longer lengths without significantly affecting transmission quality. Several manufacturers sell firewire cables longer than 5 meters (some up to 50 meters). For example:

Unibrain 10m 6/6 IEEE-1394 FireWire Cable

In addition to using a long high quality firewire cable, there are other methods of extended maximum firewire cable length:

1. Add a firewire card to your Mac using either PCI (G5) or PCMCIA (PowerBook) or Express Card (MacBook Pro) slots. This also allows you to add an additional firewire bus to your system. In addition, it is not likely to incur the delay which repeaters are likely to suffer. Adaptec PCI firewire cards have been tested, and shown to work well with Liquid Mix.

2. Add a Firewire Hub/Repeater to your existing firewire port(s). This may allow for longer cable lengths, but a delay may be incurred.