1 (edited by 2RME 2016-10-02 23:59:22)

Topic: Expanding I/O, help with PCIe interface

Hi everyone, I hope someone can help me out

Right now I run an SSL Alpha Link SX with an RME HDSP 9652 card with its
expansion board, this is giving me 24 channels via ADAT, everything works great
but I need to expand my setup to at least 48 channels, so my plan was to get another SSL Alpha for the analog I/O but my I'm not sure how to connect
the 2 units to the computer.

My first look was at the RME MADI card, which has 1 MADI I/O input for a
total of 64 channels which would be ok for me, my question is:

- can I connect 2 SSL Alpha to the HDSP MADI card? (since it has only 1 MADI I/O?) I sense the answer is no but,

- If yes, how do I do that? daisy-chaining the two SSL?

- If connecting 2 SSL ALpha to the RME MADI is not possible, my only other option is the RME MADI FX? (Which has 2 MADI I/O)

- And third option, what if I stay ADAT, is there any PCIe interface that allows to interface more than 32 channels to PC? Or is it possible to mount another 9652 and run 2 on the same machine at the same time?

thank you!

Re: Expanding I/O, help with PCIe interface

It seems like I can stack RME cards in one PC, I wasn't aware of that
Can someone with multiple RME cards setup could confirm this?

Re: Expanding I/O, help with PCIe interface

Anyone?

Re: Expanding I/O, help with PCIe interface

hI, did you get a solution to this?

Re: Expanding I/O, help with PCIe interface

Its a 3y old thread and he was talking about different ideas how to connect his devices which all was valid.

So it would be good if you would describe YOUR equipment and requirements.

You can of course stack multiple cards  (as described in the respective handbooks).

The disadvantage of such a solution is that you loose the ability of any to any routing in Totalmix FX.
If you take ie three cards then you have to work with one TM FX instance per card (3 in total) and you can only route channels inside of each instance but not across TM FX instances.
This is only a good approach if you know that any to any routing is not required or if you intend to route inside of the DAW.
If you intebd to route route inside of the DAW then you have always the Round Trip Latency in the way.

A better approach could be to choose a recording interface which has all required channels.

There I would pick PCIe based solutions to not be limited in the selection of mainboards, because mainboatds withPCI you find only rare these days.

ADAT limits you to approx 15m cable length and with higher sample rates you loose 50-75% of channels by multiplexing.

So it would be extremely helpful if you would describe your setup, how many channels you intend to transfer and what sample rates you need at maximum. A product link to your equipment would also be nice.

Much more flexibility you have with MADI.
64 channels and still 32 when recording @88.2 and 96 kHz.

You can connect multiple devices to one MADI BUS, the cabling goes from one device to the other and back to the origin.
I recommend OM4 cabling which is also good for computer networks, then you can stick to one type of cable infrastructure.
Cables between each device may be up to 2km or even longer if you order the RME devices with Single Mode interfaces. As this is more intensive laser light with different parameters you need different type of cables and all devices need to have compliant devices.
More flexible you stay with the normal multimedia fiber interfaces.

MADI is also nice in terms of remote controlling devices (MIDI over MADI). Can save a lot of MIDI cabling.

RME offers different solution how to implement MADI: USB2 / USB3 / thunderbolt / PCIe based.

The top interfaces are IMHO
- UFX+ (USB3/TB) with 1 MADI bus offering also other types of ports and the very useful DUREC
- HDSPE MADI FX (PCIe) with 3 MADI busses, full implementation of FX chip, can act as MADI router, ASIO driver with resource optimizations and redundancy features

But there are also other interesting available.

Now it would be nice to know about your setup and requirements otherwise it's impossible to make a good recommendation.

Sounds like an easy question, but there are a few things to be considered.

What is BTW your budget ??

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13