Go Back   Cockos Incorporated Forums > REAPER Forums > REAPER Compatibility

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 02-01-2012, 08:05 AM   #1
ckaiserca
Human being with feelings
 
ckaiserca's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Aurora, ON
Posts: 2
Default New to Reaper - MADI Sound card Questions

Hello!

Charles Kaiser from Aurora, ON here. I am totally new to Reaper, but judging from the bit of a play that I have had with it today, I think it will suit my needs perfectly!

I am the technical director for a 400 seat theatre, and we are in the process of buying a new DiGiCo SD9 sound console that provides 56 channels of MADI output (BNC with seperate BNC World Clock). I would like to connect the SD 9 to a computer running Reaper to record some of the shows that we do here.

What is my best option for a MADI sound card for the computer that I am going to build? Any other options besides stuff from RME that I should be looking at?

DiGiCo is coming out with a MADI interface in March, but it is USB and I worry about latency.

Also, any advice for the specs that I should be striving for in my computer build?

Thanks in advance for any input.
__________________
Charles R. Kaiser
Technical Director
Newmarket Theatre - Newmarket, ON
ckaiserca is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-04-2012, 02:42 PM   #2
zendrum
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Apr 2010
Posts: 21
Default

Hello Charles-

I use an RME HDSPe MADI card in my rig, but it seems you are already aware of RME.

The only other MADI card supplier I am aware of at this time is SSL. If you are mainly looking at recording tracks into Reaper without foldback, I would look into the SSL MadiXtreme 64. This card doesn't provide any on board zero latency monitoring or DSP for hardware accelerated effects, but if what you want to do is get audio into and out of your computer for recording live shows it may be just what you want. Plus, it is quite a bit less money than the RME unit or the SSL MX4 with on board DSP. Here is a link:

http://www.solidstatelogic.com/music...madi%20xtreme/

One issue to be aware of with the SSL cards - the MADI I/O is optical only. From the description of the SD9 on DiGiCo's www site, their I/O is BNC only, so you would have to look into optical-BNC conversion options. Both SSL and RME make such a unit, but the additional expense may lead you back to the RME card anyway.

Please don't get me wrong - I love my RME card! The drivers are stable and the card is extremely powerful. From what I've read, the SSL MX4 is great also. But you'd be paying for a bunch of features you don't plan on using.

If you do get the RME card, make sure you get the PCIe card, and not PCI. PCI is a legacy bus now, and some current chipsets (Sandy Bridge for example) don't have native PCI support. They use bridge chips for PCI support, and in some instances this causes popping and crackling problems.

As far as recording computers, everyone will have their own opinion on what hardware to use. As you are planning on building, you must be thinking Windows or Linux. From my experience with the RME card and Windows 7, the drivers for the PCIe version are very stable and work well with no problems. I think it is best to have a separate drive or RAID array that you record to apart from your system drive. Also, make sure your BIOS options are configured properly - turn off any CPU speed limiting features like C1E halt state.

Don't be concerned if you don't know what some or any of this stuff means! None of us did either at first. Jump right on in!

zendrum
__________________
SuperMicro X9SRA, Intel Xeon E5-1600
RME HDSPe MADI
SSL Alpha-Link MADI SX
zendrum is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-05-2012, 02:17 PM   #3
ckaiserca
Human being with feelings
 
ckaiserca's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Aurora, ON
Posts: 2
Default Thanks!

Many thanks for the valuable input. I'll keep you posted how this project works out.
__________________
Charles R. Kaiser
Technical Director
Newmarket Theatre - Newmarket, ON
ckaiserca is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -7. The time now is 03:46 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.