@DG said:

I think that the Multiface is a little bit cheaper, and I've had no problems with it.

DG

Yes Daryl - but forgive my technical ignorance here - but how does that stack up with a Mac Quad? This is what I want to know from a purely unquisitive side. I have no intention of getting a Mac Quad currently, but I would not like to think people are ordering this monster only to find that they have a big problem getting any noise out of it.

Well they have drivers for OSX, but I think that one would have to check with RME to find out about the Quad. It has a slightly lower spec than the Firewire one, but that might not matter; it's not for me to say.

AFAIK it has a card based interface, so that could be a problem, but as I haven't followed the Quad specs very carefully I don't know what changes Apple have made, however I can certainly recommend the Multiface from my experience.

DG

Currently,there is no PCI-e card available from any manufacturer.Digidesign have announced they are to offer one in January,and RME are working on it. MOTU (my own company of choice) have been really very annoying and unprofessional, and refused to announce even their intention to release this technology,which is a bleedin' nuisance,since I have a Quad sitting in its box in my studio,as I write this.PCI-e is, no question, the way to go for PCI technology in the near future,but,for some reason,the music industry has been very,very slow on the uptake.It's not as if it's been sprung on them,because PC hardware has featured this architecture for long enough.


It seems that music hardware future is being perceived as either Firewire,or USB,though optical is possible on the Quad,but supports only 2 channels.

Personally,I'm left with the options either to wait,and use the Quad as an ancilliary machine,over ethernet (which i did not want,because I needed the brute power of this computer to run as the main machine),or entirely replace my audio interface setup,which I also did not want.

I have RME cards in my PC and one other G5,and they are quite excellent,so I'd be very tempted away from MOTU,should they beat them in the race.

It's a dilemma,and I ain't happy.

@strawinsky said:

MOTU (my own company of choice) have been really very annoying and unprofessional, and refused to announce even their intention to release this technology,which is a bleedin' nuisance,since I have a Quad sitting in its box in my studio,as I write this.PCI-e is, no question, the way to go for PCI technology in the near future,but,for some reason,the music industry has been very,very slow on the uptake.It's not as if it's been sprung on them,because PC hardware has featured this architecture for long enough.
It's a dilemma,and I ain't happy.

This is what I've been trying in vain to explain to them Mike - it's unreal. It's like there's a total blank or something. What are people supposed to do? Just throw out their Motu soundcards I guess. And what good would that do? Hahaha!

Crazy or what?

[:D]

It may happen...

There are no PCIe cards for audio but there ARE PCIe cards for firewire 400 and 800 and USB cards so that leaves you open to all the firewire and USB interfaces some of which are fantastic. For 2 in 2 out, I've already suggested the metric halo ULN2 on firewire and the apogee mini me converters for USB, then you have the MH2882 which can be stacked for multi input/output I think up to 128 analogue connections on one machine all through firewire. There are a lot of other options heaps in fact.

The Apogee Rosetta and AD/DA 16X series is something I'm looking at as a high-end solution to this,along with the Dangerous 2-Bus for analogue i/o.PCI-e,per se, is always going to have superior bandwidth to any firewire or USB device.

@PolarBear said:

Beaswax, so far you didn't like any aspect of the VSL but still want to buy into it? I wish you all the best and hope your purchase is well thought-out. But thanks for the offer you are willing to also upgrade my computer [:D] [;)]

More seriously though, they still are running the tests for the hardware requirements, so I doubt you'll get more info until it's confirmed from other people what hardware specs are needed. From what I read, the VIs can be run at least as well as from the computers you are running your current EXS, GS, Kontakt, Halion or whatever on for your VSL samples.

All the best,
PolarBear

I never said that I didn't like any aspect of the VSI. I just thought that the pricing scheme was very unfair (seems like the same samples with a few new ones added). Since I've been doing a lot of jingle work I think that it would be better for me to save time by using the new and improved performance mode. Then it allows me to use DP and Logic freely.

@Beaswax said:

I think that it would be better for me to save time by using the new and improved performance mode.

Yes, and time is money so VSL is going to save you a lot of money and also be able to pay for all the time they spent developing this new product and samples. Also it will help them pay for the next cool thing we all want so we can sound better and make more money in less time, and...

Just wondering if anybody received their Quad yet (if you ordered one [:)] ) and would have any early advice to give?

Mine just came in today! [:D]

@Beaswax said:

I think that it would be better for me to save time by using the new and improved performance mode.

Yes, and time is money so VSL is going to save you a lot of money and also be able to pay for all the time they spent developing this new product and samples. Also it will help them pay for the next cool thing we all want so we can sound better and make more money in less time, and...

Well hopefully by that time they'll have a real VIP program....

Hi guys,

I've been trying to find some kind of performance-test results on the new quad-core macs because I still have a dual-1ghz machine, and it's time to upgrade. But all the benchmark tests conspicuously don't mention how the new machines work with audio - just photoshop and final cut.

Has anyone found some real-world results of a dual-2.7ghz G5 vs. a quad-core 2.5ghz G5 running Logic?

Kerry

@PaulR said:

... but I would not like to think people are ordering this monster only to find that they have a big problem getting any noise out of it.

I'd be surprised if that was the case...

I'm picking up mine today, so I'll try and keep a daily diary on this page of the performance of the Quad, and in Jan. how it's doing with VI.

Hopefully it will be a diary and not diarrhea! [:O]ops:

@PaulR said:

... but I would not like to think people are ordering this monster only to find that they have a big problem getting any noise out of it.

I'd be surprised if that was the case...

I'm picking up mine today, so I'll try and keep a daily diary on this page of the performance of the Quad, and in Jan. how it's doing with VI.


What soundcard did you get?

@PaulR said:

... but I would not like to think people are ordering this monster only to find that they have a big problem getting any noise out of it.

I'd be surprised if that was the case...

I'm picking up mine today, so I'll try and keep a daily diary on this page of the performance of the Quad, and in Jan. how it's doing with VI.


What soundcard did you get?

Paul, I wanted to be careful with that, so I waited the last minute, probably get it in the next few days.

@Guy said:

Paul, I wanted to be careful with that, so I waited the last minute, probably get it in the next few days.

You will proabaly want to look at RME fireface - through the firewire 800 port. If you go that way, I think it might be an idea to get an extra PCIe card - which I think gives you 2 more extra firewire 800 slots.

Although, you could look at a Motu 828 MkII thta is firewire 400.

I could do with some clarification on this now from a technocrat myself, because I'm getting totally confused.

[*-)] [*-)] [*-)] [*-)]

Number one thing to remember if you use a firewire device then you have used up all of the ONE firewire BUS (not port for which there are 3 connected to that one bus). Therefore you WILL need a PCIe card if you want to run firewire drives off your mac for samples, freezes etc. If you don't you greatly increase your risk of crashing (in my experience) ***a lot*** and also greatly reduce the performance of your hard drives. You definately need a PCIe card for extra firewire then you'll get max performance. My advice is to use the FW on your mac for your audio device and use a PCI card for your drives the reason being if you buy a PCI 800 card you can't inadvertently forget and plug an ipod or something into the mac fw400 port and screw up your drives, whereas if you plug in your ipod with your audio interface running it will probably work, or at worst it will crash your system but the point is no danger to your drives as such. If you use a fw400 audio interface (800 seems unnecessary to me) then if you do plug in an ipod you won't have any dramas and can even plug in ONE fw400 drive for backups etc that should not disrupt your interface for general use but that is not recommended when you are using logic as this can still cause crashes in my experience. Bottom line, one device per bus. the mac has ONE bus. a PCI card has ONE bus (even if it has two/three ports). If you buy two PCI cards, you'll have two extra busses. SOME PCI cards are dual BUS (I've heard but never seen one). If they say specifically "4 port 2 bus" it's probably true but I would still check it out. You should probably expect to pay around twice the price as it has double the technology on the card. Having said that fw pci cards are pretty cheap and easy to install, you can add two, giving you enough bandwidth for 4 very fast firewrire 800 drives, two on each bus, plus your audio interface on the mac. two drives raided for sample streaming, and 2 drives raided for audio and freeze tracks, use your second internal drive (if you have one) for backups.

Miklos.

Wise words from a wise person.

Thanks for all that good info Miklos![:D]

My understanding is JBOD will yield superior performance to RAID.

Maybe that is true, but Miklos didn't comment about JBOD or RAID, but over the capabilities of the internal FW800 port in a Mac that theoretically can host quite a number of devices in one chain, but as he said it's not very practical for the abovementioned needs. Seperate controller doesn't always mean RAID, and it seems that you might be better of with a seperate controller for each drive you add from his post.

PolarBear

Yes you may be right for sample streaming with 2 drives but not when you are using SATA with 4 drives or more. Well that is my understanding. Seek times are faster with 2 drives on a JBOD but it's irrelevant with 4 or more drives.

Opinions?

Anyway the above advice still stands, you're better off with SATA 4 disks and JBOD than FW 4 disks and JBOD.