4 X UAD-1 cards at 98% load-no crackling-here's how

[Animix]

Here's a formula for achieving success with 3 x RME HDSP PCI cards-
drivers are v2.94(3), 4 x UAD-1 cards (v4.2), an ASUS A8V Deluxe mobo, 4G RAM,.AMD XP4200 dual core CPU, a Matrox P750 graphics card and a 13 slot Magma chassis with 3 x IDE HD's in external cases, 1 x USB 2.0 HD, Sony IDE DVDR burner, Memorex USB CD burner and Steinberg dongle.

First of all, use the 1014 BIOs for the mobo. This gets rid of the USB over
current *feature* that rears it's ugly head with the 1017 bios.

Install the most recent VIA Hyperion drivers for the mobo.

Install all Win XP updates except the .NET 2.0 framework (use the 1.1
framework)

Update the Matrox P750 driver and bios to the most recent, then use the Matrox sysutil 1805 to *downgrade* the Matrox BIOS so the Splash screen and mobo BIOS can be viewed without garbled graphics
without upgrading to the ASUS 1017 BIOS from hell (which probably won't help anyway, even though ASUS and Matrox recommend this-don't go there)

Install the 2 x RME HDSP 9652's in PCI slots 2 & 3.

Install the Magma host card in PCI slot #4

In the Magma chassis, the slot assignments are as follows:
1.-UAD-1
2.
3. RME Multiface PCI
4.
5. UAD-1
6.
7.
8. UAD-1
9.
10.
11.
12. UAD-1
13.

I'm playing back a 31 track project with a 98% UAD-1 resource load with the
buffers set to 512k (6ms). No crackling in the audio.........at all......and
no dropouts or glitching. System isn't even breathing hard.

This is with my system marginally optomized for audio. None of the
recommended registry tweaks have been done and none of the system service tweaks have been done either.

I've been struggling with this situation for quite a while-Thanks to Chris Ludwig of ADK Pro Audio who has been extremely helpful during this ordeal.

 

[Animix]

Some followup info on this

Last night I pushed the system to the absolute max and once I exceeded 100%, some major distortion started happening. After I backed it down to around 90%, the distortion continued. I backed it down again to about 70% and the distortion *still* continued. I had saved this project under a different name because I knew I would be experimenting with it so I finally had to abandon it and go back to the original project. I ramped up the plugin count again to around 92% without any problems and it ran like that flawlessly, looped for a couple of hours. Eventually the system froze up, but there could be other reasons for this since all my system services are active right now with 3463537548576 little applets running in the background, plus, I was lightpiping the 31 tracks that were playing back in SX digitally to another DAW for summing and both DAWs were locked to a Mytek clock with about 10 digital devices being fed from two clock distro boxes (so there are a couple of other variables that might be coming into play here :wink: . The moral to this story is that on a 4 card system, it might be advisable to keep the UAD-1 CPU resources to around 90% max to to avoid the possibility of corrupting a project. This would be something like 60,000 LA-2A's or a significantly excessive number of any other combination of UAD-1 processors :lol: . I figure if I need this many processors in a mix, I'm probably doing something wrong while tracking anyway. It's really the principle of the thing with me..........and by gawd........if I have 4 x UAD-1 cards, I should be able to use the majority of the resources on every ****'in one of 'em and achieve absolute and complete wretched excess when/if I want to.........right?

](*,)

 

[seti808]

So whats the verdict ?

Is it stable or not?


I run 3 uad-1 and a tc powercore firewire all in one machine.
Sure I will have the tc firewire loss of sync all the time and have to
reset the project but there is no crashes ever.

p4c800-e

 

[Animix]

I believe it will be very stable. I had 4 x UAD-1 cards running on an older system, single core AMD XP 3000 on an ASUS A7V8X mobo with no problems. I don't expect any issues once I get the OS optimized. I am having an issue with my Cubase dongle not initializing after doing the recommended tweaks at Musicxp.net. I've got a feeling this has to do with having loaded SP2 and the .NET framework. My previous DAW was only running SP1. The more crap Windows loads, the more crap needs to be undone again.

I'll let you know once I have the system tweaks done.

 

[Animix]

it's working and it's stable

I had a bit of an issue with turning off system services and having the Steinberg USB dongle fail to initialize after loading SP2. I've done all other tweaks except turning off system services (which is no biggie anyway, to me) and this 4 card system has been running fast and very stable.......with no crackling of the audio. The secret to this was putting all 4 x UAD-1 cards in the Magma 13 slot chassis and having them all on the same IRQ and installing the HDSP 9652's in the mobo PCI slots.

 

[Doublehelix]

I have this crazy 70% limit issue and hav been back and forth with UA tech support with no solutions.

I have 3 cards and a Poco in a Magma chassis. I cannot load the UAD-1 card past 70% without getting errors. Very frustrating!

Asus P4P800-E Deluxe mobo (Intel 865 chipset)
Intel Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz Prescott 800 FSB
1 GHz Kingston DDR PC3200 400 Mhz CL 3.0 (2 X 512MB)
Matrox G450 AGP Video Card
200 GB Western Digital 7200 RPM/8 MB (OS/App Drive)
200 GB Western Digital 7200 RPM/8 MB (Data Drive #1)
80 GB Maxtor 7200 RPM/8 MB (Mastering/Mixing Data Drive #2)
160 GB Maxtor External USB2 (Backup Drive)
3.5\" 1.44 MB Mitsumi Floppy Drive
Plextor PX-712SA SATA DVD+R/CDR Drive
Lynx AES-16 card w/ firmware rev 20
3 X UAD-1 Cards (v. 4.20)
PowerCore Element Card
2 X 17\" Flat Screen LCD Monitors
Antec Sonata case w/ 380 watt True Power PS
2 X 120 mm Antec Smartcool fans
Windows XP Home SP2
Cubase SX 3.02.623
Wavelab 6.0b

 

[Animix]

I have this crazy 70% limit issue and hav been back and forth with UA tech support with no solutions.

I have 3 cards and a Poco in a Magma chassis. I cannot load the UAD-1 card past 70% without getting errors. Very frustrating!

Asus P4P800-E Deluxe mobo (Intel 865 chipset)
Intel Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz Prescott 800 FSB
1 GHz Kingston DDR PC3200 400 Mhz CL 3.0 (2 X 512MB)
Matrox G450 AGP Video Card
200 GB Western Digital 7200 RPM/8 MB (OS/App Drive)
200 GB Western Digital 7200 RPM/8 MB (Data Drive #1)
80 GB Maxtor 7200 RPM/8 MB (Mastering/Mixing Data Drive #2)
160 GB Maxtor External USB2 (Backup Drive)
3.5" 1.44 MB Mitsumi Floppy Drive
Plextor PX-712SA SATA DVD+R/CDR Drive
Lynx AES-16 card w/ firmware rev 20
3 X UAD-1 Cards (v. 4.20)
PowerCore Element Card
2 X 17" Flat Screen LCD Monitors
Antec Sonata case w/ 380 watt True Power PS
2 X 120 mm Antec Smartcool fans
Windows XP Home SP2
Cubase SX 3.02.623
Wavelab 6.0b

I'm not familiar with your mobo. I don't see anything obvious there. Are your UAD-1's sharing IRQ's with anything else that is in heavy use during mixing........like the Lynx or the FW port? Is the Magma in a slot that is not sharing with any other device?

On my mobo, PCI slot #4 does not share IRQ with any other device in the system. That's the slot I use for the Magma host card. Though certain slots in the Magma will share IRQ with other devices on the mobo (so you have to be careful about which ones you use and select the Magma PCI slots accordingly) the Magma host card itself is in a mobo slot that is totally free of other IRQ traffic.

 

[jcat]

IRQ sharing problems are a bit of a myth these days, it's just not an issue on most modern motherboards. It used to be a problem back in the early days...

BTW Animixproductions:

If you experience that crackling again after running the UAD's too hard just change the ASIO buffer to some other value from the HDSP control panel, and then change it back again, then reset the ASIO devices from within SX/Nuendo. That should cure it.

I experienced a similar problem before (3xUAD plus HDSP9652), that was the solution for me.

Hope that helps...


8)



Cheers,

jcat

 

[1stgecco]

@jcat:

that is true indeed and a quickfix for other problemos too, for instance strange behaviour of Mackie controll+XTs.

back and forth, back and forth, back and forth........ :lol:

cheers
gecco

 

[Animix]

IRQ sharing problems are a bit of a myth these days, it's just not an issue on most modern motherboards. It used to be a problem back in the early days...

BTW Animixproductions:

If you experience that crackling again after running the UAD's too hard just change the ASIO buffer to some other value from the HDSP control panel, and then change it back again, then reset the ASIO devices from within SX/Nuendo. That should cure it.

I experienced a similar problem before (3xUAD plus HDSP9652), that was the solution for me.

Hope that helps...


8)



Cheers,

jcat

Interesting. I have never been able to get my system to stabilize when any audio device was sharing IRQ with a graphics card and I've never been able to achieve nearly the track count or UAD-1 resource usage with *any* system when UAD-1 cards and RME cards were sharing IRQ's. I did try resetting the buffers and ASIO devices with no real effect.

On my system, the previous configuration had either all of the RME cards and UAD-1 cards in the Magma or it had all of the RME cards and two of the UAD-1 cards in the Magma with the other two UAD-1 cards in the mobo PCI slots. This was a crackling nightmare. The ticket to stop the crackling was to get the two HDSP 9652 cards out of the Magma chassis and to load all four of the UAD-1 cards and the Multiface PCI card in the Magma, with all of the UAD-1 cards sharing the same IRQ, and that IRQ not being shared with any other device and the RME cards using two different IRQ's. One of the HDSP9652's and the Multiface PCI card are sharing IRQ's with each other and my LAN controller and the other HDSP 9652 isn't sharing an IRQ with anything else.

Maybe IRQ sharing *shouldn't* make a difference, but on my system, it really seems to. My system is flying along now with over 90% of the 4 x UAD-1 DSP resources available and no crackling at all with high track count projects playing back at 512k buffers if that's what I want. This is much better than it ever was before.

Go figure. :?

 

[Doublehelix]

Thanks for your comments, but I have worked hard on the IRQ-sharing issue, and the only things that share an IRQ are the UAD-1 cards themselves. Everything else is on its own interrupt. (Actually, I think 2 UAD-1 cards share in IRQ, and 1 UAD-1 card shares with the Poco, but I need to verify that).

 

[Animix]

Thanks for your comments, but I have worked hard on the IRQ-sharing issue, and the only things that share an IRQ are the UAD-1 cards themselves. Everything else is on its own interrupt. (Actually, I think 2 UAD-1 cards share in IRQ, and 1 UAD-1 card shares with the Poco, but I need to verify that).

I'm not saying that my particular situation should be the case with every system. Besides the Magma being part of the equation, I am routing all of my tracks over a digital matrix from the DAW I have been describing to another DAW for summing. I am, in effect, mixing *in parallel* on two different systems while processing the same tracks on both. The system running Cubase SX is timeline slaved to another system via sample accurate ADAT sync and both systems (along with 9 other digital devices) are synced to a distributed Mytek word clock.

Now none of this this *should* make a difference as far as IRQ sharing and system performance are concerned on the DAW running Cubase SX, but with this much crap happening all at once, the occasionaL sacrifice of a chicken may be called for. :wink:

 

[rdolmat]

Here's a formula for achieving success with 3 x RME HDSP PCI cards-
drivers are v2.94(3), 4 x UAD-1 cards (v4.2), an ASUS A8V Deluxe mobo, 4G RAM,.AMD XP4200 dual core CPU, a Matrox P750 graphics card and a 13 slot Magma chassis with 3 x IDE HD's in external cases, 1 x USB 2.0 HD, Sony IDE DVDR burner, Memorex USB CD burner and Steinberg dongle.

I feel so inadequate now with my single CPU and one UAD card....

 

[Animix]

Here's a formula for achieving success with 3 x RME HDSP PCI cards-
drivers are v2.94(3), 4 x UAD-1 cards (v4.2), an ASUS A8V Deluxe mobo, 4G RAM,.AMD XP4200 dual core CPU, a Matrox P750 graphics card and a 13 slot Magma chassis with 3 x IDE HD's in external cases, 1 x USB 2.0 HD, Sony IDE DVDR burner, Memorex USB CD burner and Steinberg dongle.

I feel so inadequate now with my single CPU and one UAD card....

You should feel blessed that you have not yet become a victim of chronic gear sluttage. :wink: