Old 04-21-2019, 08:19 PM   #1
foxAsteria
Human being with feelings
 
foxAsteria's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Oblivion
Posts: 10,255
Default RME AIO Maximum Inputs?

In a recent attempt to upgrade my recording rig I wound up overspending and it doesn't at all appear to work the way I'd hoped.

Did I buy all the wrong shit?

What I tried to achieve:
An ultra low latency, internal card setup with at least 16 ins (8 pre, 8 line) and 8 outs for less than $1k (seems largely impossible without resorting to decade+ old gear).

Shit I bought:
RME AIO with the 4 channel in and out cards
Clarett OctoPre
Digimax FS

I did a lot of research; though apparently not enough because I was sure I would be able to daisy chain the racks via optical ADAT into the RME for 16 analog inputs, but AFACT, that's not possible, even though the OctoPre manual suggests that it can be daisy chained through and 8Pre for 16 channels of ADAT. I guess that depends on the limitations of the card at the end of the chain... If only the card could use both optical as inputs!

Is the only way to use all 38 touted channels of the AIO card to purchase every available extension card and breakout cable, something that outputs AES, and ADAT only gives 8 from outside?

With RME's claim that "this card makes the dream of an All-In-One solution for every possible application come true," I'd be incredibly disappointed to find that I'm not easily able to replace my 16 ch Onyx firewire mixer...

So how do I make use of all this IO? Should I have gone for RayDAT or some old PCI 9652? Should I just trade it all in and look at something else?

Anyone know how big of a latency advantage PCIe has over PCI on these RME cards?
__________________
foxyyymusic

Last edited by foxAsteria; 04-23-2019 at 08:37 AM.
foxAsteria is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-22-2019, 01:33 AM   #2
ivansc
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Near Cambridge UK and Near Questembert, France
Posts: 22,754
Default

RME HDSP9652 pci here & when I needed 24 ins and outs it worked great with a pair of ADA8000 and a focusrite Octopre, including the sp/dif....

But I am surprised you cant get anywhere with the stuff you already have. Did you talk to RME about it?

Just checked the blurb on the RME site & it claims to be a replacement for the 9632 card.
If this is the case, I cant see any reason why you cant integrate the native I/O with anything on the ADAT bus. Be interested to find out how this works out, as I suspect my pci card is going to get harder and harder to integrate as and when I need a new mobo/cpu.
__________________
Ici on parles Franglais
ivansc is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-22-2019, 01:43 AM   #3
Stella645
Human being with feelings
 
Stella645's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: UK
Posts: 3,648
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by foxAsteria View Post

the OctoPre manual suggests that it can be daisy chained through and 8Pre for 16 channels of ADAT.
The 8pre is an interface. Adding the Octopre to it gives total 16 channels of input. No daisy chaining involved.

Don't think I'm telling you anything you don't already realise....but yes, to use all 18 inputs on the RME you would need to utilise the spdif and the AES inputs alongside the analog ins and 8 channels over ADAT.

PCI has no performance hit over PCIe but I wouldn't be investing into PCI this late in the game when you can't buy a new computer that will utilise it.
Stella645 is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 04-22-2019, 02:01 AM   #4
Stella645
Human being with feelings
 
Stella645's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: UK
Posts: 3,648
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by ivansc View Post
Be interested to find out how this works out, as I suspect my pci card is going to get harder and harder to integrate as and when I need a new mobo/cpu.

Raydat is the update of the 9652 when you need to go PCIe.
Stella645 is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 04-22-2019, 02:40 AM   #5
foxAsteria
Human being with feelings
 
foxAsteria's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Oblivion
Posts: 10,255
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Stella645 View Post
PCI has no performance hit over PCIe but I wouldn't be investing into PCI this late in the game when you can't buy a new computer that will utilise it.
Well that's good news. Fortunately I made sure my new mobo had PCI slots for my old E-Mu card. I decided to sell the AIO and just get an old 9652, which will save me a few hundred bucks and give me the 16 ADAT inputs I need for the racks units.
__________________
foxyyymusic
foxAsteria is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-22-2019, 02:45 AM   #6
foxAsteria
Human being with feelings
 
foxAsteria's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Oblivion
Posts: 10,255
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by ivansc View Post
I cant see any reason why you cant integrate the native I/O with anything on the ADAT bus.
I can, but I didn't realize I was limited to only 8 ch over ADAT, so I can't use both those units. I can have up to I was surprised I couldn't find any affordable rack units with 8 pre and 8 line inputs. Just seems like an obvious combination and it's standard for many mid sized mixers...
__________________
foxyyymusic
foxAsteria is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-22-2019, 04:19 AM   #7
Stella645
Human being with feelings
 
Stella645's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: UK
Posts: 3,648
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by foxAsteria View Post
Well that's good news. Fortunately I made sure my new mobo had PCI slots for my old E-Mu card. I decided to sell the AIO and just get an old 9652, which will save me a few hundred bucks and give me the 16 ADAT inputs I need for the racks units.
Beyond my technical knowledge but to pass on what I have read...There are some suggestions that PCI on the latest motherboards is likely to bridged rather than native which can cause issues with low latency performance at higher channel counts.
Stella645 is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 04-22-2019, 12:51 PM   #8
foxAsteria
Human being with feelings
 
foxAsteria's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Oblivion
Posts: 10,255
Default

Well I'll have both cards briefly so I'll do a little side by side test. I can't afford a new RayDAT card, so hopefully this will suffice. I assume the bridging is for mobos without the old slot? E.g. I've got an IDE adapter in one of the PCIe slots for my old CD ROM drives.
__________________
foxyyymusic

Last edited by foxAsteria; 04-22-2019 at 01:09 PM.
foxAsteria is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-22-2019, 01:42 PM   #9
Stella645
Human being with feelings
 
Stella645's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: UK
Posts: 3,648
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by foxAsteria View Post
Well I'll have both cards briefly so I'll do a little side by side test. I can't afford a new RayDAT card, so hopefully this will suffice. I assume the bridging is for mobos without the old slot? E.g. I've got an IDE adapter in one of the PCIe slots for my old CD ROM drives.
No..this is with boards that do have the legacy slot.

You can see some discussion here and mentions of boards using native vs bridged PCI. This was already a good few years ago so not sure how things stand with newer boards.

https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=18145
https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=12432
Stella645 is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 04-22-2019, 01:46 PM   #10
foxAsteria
Human being with feelings
 
foxAsteria's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Oblivion
Posts: 10,255
Default

Cool, yea seems I'm in the clear since I went AMD/ASUS with this build.
__________________
foxyyymusic
foxAsteria is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-22-2019, 01:48 PM   #11
Stella645
Human being with feelings
 
Stella645's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: UK
Posts: 3,648
Default

Ahh...good news!
Stella645 is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 04-23-2019, 12:05 AM   #12
ivansc
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Near Cambridge UK and Near Questembert, France
Posts: 22,754
Default

FWIW I used to run 24 I/O on my 9652 with zero issues. And it would seem that the RME software doesnt seem to care if you are using a legacy pci or a "real!" one. PLenty of single and a few double slot pci mobos still out there I am glad to say. But thanks to this thread & have done a little shopping around to confirm this. APPARENTLY i AM SAFE AT LEAST UP TO THE 8 AND 9 SERIES INTELS & JUDGING BY WHAT YOU SAID RE rYZEN IT LOOKS LIKE i MIGHT EVEN BE RETURNING TO amd AFTER A LENGTHY ABSENCE.

Oops sorry about caps. Arthritic fingers and no touch-typing skills again...
__________________
Ici on parles Franglais
ivansc is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-24-2019, 09:28 PM   #13
foxAsteria
Human being with feelings
 
foxAsteria's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Oblivion
Posts: 10,255
Default

So I just swapped out the PCIe AIO for the PCI 9652 card and it was functioning almost immediately after boot with the same driver. Only difference is the channels shown in TotalMix. Performance in Reaper identical AFAICT. CPU and RTCPU are the same in my test project.

Maybe recording many tracks at once would show some difference between PCI and PCIe (I didn't test that with the first card), but you gotta love a driver that can perform flawlessly with cards manufactured years apart and with different technologies....

Plus I halved the price of the card and doubled my ADAT channels. Pleased, I am.
__________________
foxyyymusic
foxAsteria is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-25-2019, 04:54 AM   #14
ivansc
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Near Cambridge UK and Near Questembert, France
Posts: 22,754
Default

Welcome to my world! FWIW I did at one time borrow a pcie card of a pal to see if it changed anything and the answer is not to any degree that I could see. And this was indeed with a pair of RME cards.

Looks like we are both going to be using blasts from the past for a while yet...
__________________
Ici on parles Franglais
ivansc is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-25-2019, 08:31 AM   #15
foxAsteria
Human being with feelings
 
foxAsteria's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Oblivion
Posts: 10,255
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by ivansc View Post
Looks like we are both going to be using blasts from the past for a while yet...

Heheh, yea, an oldie but a goodie. Well I was replacing my old E-Mu 1212m from 2003 with something better, but not much newer.
__________________
foxyyymusic
foxAsteria 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 02:45 PM.


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