Multiple card use?

Switch · 12-14-2007, 04:54 AM

Alright, so I have a multiface II and I just got a mackie 1620 w/firewire. I'd like to be able to use both units simultaneously.

After a little research it seems one cannot use 2 different sound cards/devices with ASIO at once. So it seems the problem lays in having seperate ASIO drivers.

Anyone got any ideas?

404NotFound · 12-14-2007, 05:12 AM

Try ASIO4All, it shoud fit your needs - but don't expect superior performance. You also have to link the interfaces via wordclock.

Switch · 12-14-2007, 05:31 AM

Argh, I thought this may happen. Word clock you say? The mackie desk only has 2 firewire sockets in it, would it be able to take a word clock?

Diogenes · 12-14-2007, 10:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switch

Argh, I thought this may happen. Word clock you say? The mackie desk only has 2 firewire sockets in it, would it be able to take a word clock?

The Mackie does not support Wordclock. Their literature states you can daisy-chain their FW equipped mixers together for more I/O. In that case the audio clock is synch'ed via FireWire.

If ASIO4ALL doesn't work out for you, you may be hosed man...

D

404NotFound · 12-14-2007, 01:08 PM

It's possible to get things working without WC, but then the tracks will likely run out of sync during recording. You could fix this manually afterwards, but it's a PITA.

Switch · 12-15-2007, 12:15 AM

Argh, I figured as such.

Does anyone think this would be a valid feature request? It seems to be ASIO that is a problem, but would it be possible to work around, outside the suggestions here?

I'm thinking using ReaRoute or some such thing. Have one device appear as an 'asio application' with its own I/O's, which would basically be the I/O's of the device?

Does ASIO require that there's only 1 ASIO driver running at any one time on the system?

Justin · 12-15-2007, 12:29 AM

There's just too much that can go wrong hosting two different ASIO drivers.. It may be possible etc, but it would be problematic and sketchy at best.

XonXoff · 12-15-2007, 02:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 404NotFound

It's possible to get things working without WC, but then the tracks will likely run out of sync during recording. You could fix this manually afterwards, but it's a PITA.

I did some tests a number of years ago with SB Live cards. Yep, they are cheap (which was why I used them), but the clock drift was heading towards the audio being out in the order of milliseconds over a five minute song. Better cards may be different. As 404 says you could work around it but that's not really a workable solution.

One thing that I did investigate with Live cards was to daisy chain them. Digital out of one card (#2) into the digital in of the other (#2). With a bit of routing I could get card #2's analogue inputs to appear at card #1's digital output. Then with Card #1's analogue inputs routed as normal I could record 4 distinct audio tracks from 4 analogue sources. There was a tiny bit of fixed latency (nano seconds) due to the routing through the second card, but that was easy to fix.

Not sure if something like this is possible using the hardware mentioned in the OP but it may be a workaround.... then again 8 or 10 input cards are pretty cheap nowadays..... which is why I didn't persue the "2 Live cards" method any further. :-)

Switch · 12-16-2007, 12:45 AM

Thanks for the replies guys.

I'll see how I go with the ASIO4ALL driver, I don't have high hopes, but we'll see. If it turns out to be cruddy, I'll hock the firewire card and probably get another multiface II, or RME 8 chan a/d.

I'm not all tech'd up as I'd like to be, so this maybe a stupid question, but, does the whole ASIO deal require that there's only 1 ASIO driver running at any one time in the whole operating system?

planetnine · 12-16-2007, 02:47 AM

i think some M-Audio cards are designed to be stacked up, but only with their twins (or other brothers, possibly) and so all use the same driver version.

sync seems to be obtained via the S/PDIF connectors. you're supposed to be able to stack up four Delta-66 or 1010 cards, but don't know if they're mixable...

Amberience · 12-16-2007, 03:52 AM

People are right when they say this is a PITA. I seriously wouldn't bother. If you need more inputs or something, get rid of both and get something superior to both of them.

Just my opinion mind you.

drbam · 12-16-2007, 06:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switch

Thanks for the replies guys.

I'll see how I go with the ASIO4ALL driver, I don't have high hopes, but we'll see. If it turns out to be cruddy, I'll hock the firewire card and probably get another multiface II, or RME 8 chan a/d.

I'm not all tech'd up as I'd like to be, so this maybe a stupid question, but, does the whole ASIO deal require that there's only 1 ASIO driver running at any one time in the whole operating system?

You didn't say whether you need to record 16 tracks or just have 16 analog coming back into the Mackie. If its the latter, then I'd suggest adding a Behringer ADA8000 via firewire. I have a Multiface II with an ADA 8000 coming into an Onyx 1640 for monitoring and outboard efx. If you need to record more than 8 channels at a time then I'd suggest adding another Multiface but you can use the line inputs of the ADA 8000 if you send a nice hot signal to it.