Windows 8 - Tunderbolt for Apollo?

albridi

New Member
Hi there!

I'm newbie around here. I own two UAD 2 Duo, and I'm very happy with them, so I'm thinking about to purchase an Apollo interface, but I'm under W8 and my PC doesn't have Firewire ports (my mobo is an ASUS P8Z77-V PRO/THUNDERBOLT).

Is there any news about the drivers development of thunderbolt for Apollo interface under W8 :roll:?

Thanks in advance.

Kind regards.
 

UniversalAudio

Official UA Representative
Hi there!

I'm newbie around here. I own two UAD 2 Duo, and I'm very happy with them, so I'm thinking about to purchase an Apollo interface, but I'm under W8 and my PC doesn't have Firewire ports (my mobo is an ASUS P8Z77-V PRO/THUNDERBOLT).

Is there any news about the drivers development of thunderbolt for Apollo interface under W8 :roll:?

Thanks in advance.

Kind regards.
Hi Albridi,

There are no plans for Thunderbolt Apollos on Windows at this point. We're starting to see Thunderbolt ports on newer mobos, but the PCIe audio drivers we need to go forward don't exist in the operating system yet, so until that happens we're supporting Windows with FireWire. We have two qualified FW PCIe cards that have the required TI chipset and they are listed here:

Apollo Support Page

Hope that helps!

-GK
Gannon Kashiwa
 

albridi

New Member
Hi Gannon, thanks for supporting :)!

Gannon Kashiwa said:
...the PCIe audio drivers we need to go forward don't exist in the operating system yet...
Ok, if I understand correctly, this means there should be a layer between your drivers and the OS that isn't actually there. The manufacturer drivers (Asus in my case) aren't valid to communicate an Apollo with the PC hardware, right?

OK, time to think about Firewire. But here another doubt arises. For this to work, I have to put one Firewire card in the PCIe path directly, and this will lead share resources with other processes as the graphics, or my DUO cards. If I make use of one of the Firewire cards that you recommends, will I be away from audio glitches and dropouts? And what about latency, how much can I expect?

Btw, I could see at the Apollo's support page, all the compatibility is based on W7. Is all that info applicable to W8.1, my actual OS?

Thanks again!

Kind regards.
 
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billybk1

Shareholder
Btw, I could see at the Apollo's support page, all the compatibility is based on W7. Is all that info applicable to W8.1, my actual OS?
I have a UA supported Sonnet Allegro FW800 PCIe card installed (this is the one to get and make sure to only use the OS supplied Texas Instruments FW800 driver) and have successfully used it with Win 8.1 x64 Pro and my Apollo QUAD. Using a ASUS Z87 Deluxe/QUAD MB (see specs in my signature).

You may want to read through the Win/Apollo/TB thread where fellow users share their Apollo experiences with various DAW setups (Win 7/8 FW/TB). Keep in mind, TB on Win is not supported by UA. But, if you have compatible DAW components and are computer savvy and comfortable tweaking BIOS/OS settings then you may get it to work. This only works with the rack size Apollo 8/16 units. The Apollo Twin is not Win compatible at all.

http://uadforum.com/apollo-interfaces/12446-apollo-working-thunderbolt-setups-windows-7-a-3.html

Cheers,

Billy Buck
 
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albridi

New Member
Hi Billy, thanks for replying!

These are excellent news. Anyway, our systems are slightly different, you have a Z87 chipset and an i7 fourth generation processor, mine is a third generation i7 with Z77 chipset, and you know what a generation means in computing terms...eons!

Ok, I'll check it out the setups post. Will see if someone successfully working with a config like mine.

Kind regards.
 

billybk1

Shareholder
Yeah, I built my latest Thunderbolt DAW from scratch using select computer components specific for Apollo compatibility. I found the ASUS Z87 Deluxe/QUAD getting rave reviews for TB compatibility with the Apollo. So I took a leap of faith and went for it! :) At the very least, I wanted to be able to run via FW800. So I initially used the Sonnet Allegro FW800 PCIe card/ TI FW800 drivers combo and installed UAD v7.5, during initial DAW testing and spent a week stress testing the system. Once that was working successfully, I moved on to getting the TB/Apollo connectivity up and running. I had to download the most recent ASUS TB driver update (the one on the included driver CDROM did not work with the Apollo) and do a couple of BIOS/OS tweaks and lo and behold I have a working Apollo/Win 8.1 Thunderbolt DAW! :D I've kept the Sonnet Allegro FW800 card installed as a backup, in case the TB ever goes south. But so far, after 4 months of use, the TB is still working fine. I have even successfully installed (2) subsequent UAD updates (v7.6 & v7.7 over the top) and an Apollo firmware upgrade via the Thunderbolt cable since then! I did initially have an issue with high DPC latencies on Win 8.1 x64, but I got that sussed out after a few weeks by going into the BIOS and disabling useless non-related DAW devices (unused USB ports, on-board HD audio, wireless wifi, Realteck LAN, ASmedia SATA ports, etc...), which freed up resources and a lot of IRQ's. Right now my Thunderbolt DAW is running lean and humming like a top!

Even though the audio drivers are still FW800 over TB, the DSP drivers are true PCIe. So you do get the benefit of PCIe for the DSP processing. I can easily run projects @ 64 samples and use the LiveTrack mode on UAD plug-ins from the DAW app. Hopefully, UA will get around to furnishing PCIe audio drivers at some point too.

Cheers,

Billy Buck
 
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Syncamorea

Established Member
Hopefully, UA will get around to furnishing PCIe audio drivers at some point too.
At the very least, I'd like to know why this is not a top priority for UA. My friends at Intel that design north and southbridge chips say it's not a huge task.
 

billybk1

Shareholder
At the very least, I'd like to know why this is not a top priority for UA. My friends at Intel that design north and southbridge chips say it's not a huge task.
From what I understand, UA is waiting on Microsoft to release a unified TB driver standard that developers can adhere to. Right now, each MB manufacturer (ASUS, Gigabyte, etc....) is releasing their own TB drivers. What may work on one may not on another, which is problematic for developers and a support nightmare. I had previously tried an HP laptop with a TB port and I could never get the audio drivers from the Apollo to work, so I returned it. So it seems the ball is in Microsoft's court. Although, I agree that UA should be proactive an already have at least Alpha versions of the Win PCIe audio drivers in development so they can be ready once an MS TB update is released. I'd be willing to beta test! :D

Cheers,

Billy Buck
 

albridi

New Member
billybk1 said:
...Right now my Thunderbolt DAW is running lean and humming like a top!...
Nice :D! But it seems is more a matter of luck to get up and running under Win 8.1, don't you think? I'm afraid that "a leap of faith" is too risky to me right now :sad:.

billybk1 said:
...From what I understand, UA is waiting on Microsoft to release a unified TB driver standard...
Totally agree. But to me, this is a big mistake on UA's thinking. Just think about it: When Microsoft have developed a high quality driver that can be used succesfully for pro-audio purposes? Easy: never. In fact, we all (Windows adepts) should be eternally gratefull to Steinberg for their incredible ASIO technology.

I think UA should be more in the ballpark, supporting only two or three mobos manufacturers, perhaps ASUS, Intel and Gygabyte. But this is only my thought.

Kind regards!
 

Syncamorea

Established Member
From what I understand, UA is waiting on Microsoft to release a unified TB driver standard that developers can adhere to.
Before 2010, Intel had white papers that claimed one of the beauties of Lightpeak / Thunderbolt was that conventional PCi-e drivers would work for many devices. There didn't seem to be much of a problem running FW800 over TB with the Apollo into my PC and people I know that write drivers claim that FW drivers are far from trivial. You may be right - that Microsoft would write a unified driver but I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually Intel that writes it, or a contractor.
 

quadrod

Member
It seems to me if UAD is willing to recommend PCIe Firewire cards for PC, there shouldn't be a big issue in testing, supporting and ultimately recommending a motherboard (such as ASUS Z87 Deluxe/QUAD) or two for PC that supports thunderbolt.

There's a lot of us PC builders/users out there waiting for this.
 

albridi

New Member
...there shouldn't be a big issue in testing, supporting and ultimately recommending a motherboard (such as ASUS Z87 Deluxe/QUAD) or two for PC that supports thunderbolt...
Amen brother ;) .

...There's a lot of us PC builders/users out there waiting for this...
Perhaps they really don't know how many PC's adepts are using their products. Perhaps we all should make a Facebook or Twitter group to let they know how many we are out there. I'm really surprise that UAD launches a new software version just to add more plugins, and still don't support Thunderbolt under Windows 8.1.

I know Microsoft will probably stop W8.1 development, and surely launches Windows 9 in short, but the new OS version should have a previous basis, so it should have backward compatibility, I think.

Regards.
 

albridi

New Member
Last thoughts about this...

At the Downloads page from UAD site, it could be read that version 7.8.1 of their software requires W7 64 bits to work, but I'm using W8.1 64 bits to work with my two UAD 2 Duo cards, and all seems to be ok with my system, so...Is it reasonably to think that this could be applied to Apollo driver's behavior? I mean, Apollo drivers should run seamlessly within W8.1 in my system, don't you think (Firewire drivers, at least)?

Regards.
 

NEWRIGEL

Active Member
At the very least, I'd like to know why this is not a top priority for UA. My friends at Intel that design north and southbridge chips say it's not a huge task.
Apple co-developed TB. It's been known for a while. Apple comes up with quite a few standards in use today... PC's will soon be there. They thought that USB 3 was the thing but Apple waited for the controller to be on-die with the newer gen CPU's before getting on the boat.
 
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NEWRIGEL

Active Member
Hi Gannon, thanks for supporting :)!

Ok, if I understand correctly, this means there should be a layer between your drivers and the OS that isn't actually there. The manufacturer drivers (Asus in my case) aren't valid to communicate an Apollo with the PC hardware, right?

OK, time to think about Firewire. But here another doubt arises. For this to work, I have to put one Firewire card in the PCIe path directly, and this will lead share resources with other processes as the graphics, or my DUO cards. If I make use of one of the Firewire cards that you recommends, will I be away from audio glitches and dropouts? And what about latency, how much can I expect?

Btw, I could see at the Apollo's support page, all the compatibility is based on W7. Is all that info applicable to W8.1, my actual OS?

Thanks again!

Kind regards.
you could just use a mac.
 

albridi

New Member
you could just use a mac.
Hi NEWRIGEL, thanks for replying.

Sorry, I hate MACs (Don't worry, just kidding :mrgreen:).

I'm very confortable using PCs, and have no idea about MACs, so this is not a solution for me. I'll wait to see if UAD decide to support more in depth Apollo line for PC, if they don't I probably will choose RME, MOTU, Focus, or Steinberg's gear instead.

Kind regards.
 

Syncamorea

Established Member
Apple co-developed TB. It's been known for a while. Apple comes up with quite a few standards in use today...
I think that's a bit misleading. Intel developed Lightpeak and introduced it in '09 with signal transmission via optical cable. Apple motivated Intel to develop the copper wire transmission version (Thunderbolt) and if I recall correctly, Apple's contribution was designing the cable termination / socket with introduction on the '11 MBP. I don't think Apple did any of the digital design.

PC's will soon be there.
I built a PC with TB 16 months ago so what's needed are for the maestros at UA to write Windows TB drivers.
 

billybk1

Shareholder
I built a PC with TB 16 months ago so what's needed are for the maestros at UA to write Windows TB drivers.
If UA would just release the Win PCIe audio drivers that would be the final piece for many of us! I already have my Apollo working over TB on my Win8.1 Pro x64 DAW, but I am stuck using the available Win FW audio drivers (although the DSP drivers are PCIe). If UA had the PCIe audio drivers already available, I would just use those instead and be happy as a clam. :)

Cheers,

Billy Buck
 

albridi

New Member
Hi there :D !

I'm bringing to life this old post, because I'm thinking about purchasing an Apollo Twin for my Windows setup. Now I'm running Windows 10 as OS, but I still have the same mobo (P8Z77-V PRO/THUNDERBOLT). This mother board features a Thunderbolt first generation port, but it doesn't have internal Thunderbolt connectors, so a PCIe card like the ASUS ThunderboltEX 3 doesn't seems to be an upgrade option.

Is there any other PCIe Thunderbolt 3 card that can be used with an Apollo Twin?

Have I to beard in mind some special considerations about Apollo Twin's performance under Windows 10 by using a Thunderbolt 3 card?

Kind regards!
 
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