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Re: Mac compatible 5.1 audio sound cards
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Re: Mac compatible 5.1 audio sound cards


  • Subject: Re: Mac compatible 5.1 audio sound cards
  • From: Cyril Blanc <email@hidden>
  • Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2008 07:35:26 +0200

Hi Rick


I was just watching the Motu PCI Console

My limit on PCI E on a MACPRO 8 core 3 ghz is 180 faders

I can route my 84 entries more than twice !!! than not using the CPU as it is the PCI card that does all the job !!

What about your 896 ?

Best

Cyril
On Aug 1, 2008, at 11:47 AM, Richard Burnett wrote:

Sorry, I wasn't clear. There does exist FW800 interfaces, but no real push to move to them because there isn't a big advantage to using them. The data speed is overkill.

The UAD problem is because data has to get in and out of the card, and there is a lot of other stuff happening at the same time, I agree it is much more of a complicated matter, but a good example of PCIe cards having trouble in a real time application.

As for pops and clicks, there exists MANY FW interfaces that do not have these problems. Many times, it is faulty drivers or faulty hardware that just doesn't perform well. I had a 2048 mkII that would pop and click on a PC because the PCI bus controller on the motherboard didn't work with packet sizes that were common to most motherboards, talk about frustrating.

People get pops and clicks with PCI cards as well, especially depending on which PCI slot the card is in and how much bus activity you have going on on the PCI bus at the same time. I've seen MANY examples of bus contention with network cards, video cards, DSP accelerator cards and of course sound cards. Neither firewire or PCIe is free from these issues in certain configurations.

To take this even a step further, because a card is design from PCIe doesn't mean it works at the fastest speed that PCIe supports. There are many different PCIe specifications that work at different speeds. My PCI UAD card supports the same throughput as the PCIe version I have. This of course being a limitation of the DSP on board.

I use logic pretty extensively and I can say there are definitely some issues NOT related to sound cards that are causing pops, clicks and hiccups with the system. Long plugin chains on a track will stay on one processor, so there is issues with load balancing it appears. Sometimes, projects will just get stuck working with one processor and not the rest caused drop-outs. Reloading the project makes it go away.

But back to the interface, from a technical level, even if you replace the PCI card, the unit still runs at the speed it was running at before, so you still get the same throughput. The PCIe card is still going to be waiting for data from the interface.

These are all of course opinions anyways :) But when I went from my G5 tower to my MacPro tower, it was nice not having to shell out a bunch of money for an update card for the 2 896HDs and 1 896 I had. Of course, I did have to buy new UAD cards, but I was able to sell the old ones to people staying with the G5.

Anways, to the original question asker, I hope you found some good responses to your questions! :)

Rick
Asylum Studio Productions





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 >Re: Mac compatible 5.1 audio sound cards (From: Cyril Blanc <email@hidden>)

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