Dual 1.8 G5 and 2xUAd-1

[quincy72]

If I'm purchasing a firewire audiocard, will it matter what slots I put my UAD-1's?

 

[UAJames]

No not in your case since the Dual 1.8 does not have multiple PCI buses, and because you are using a FW audio interface. Normally we recomend putting the PCI audio inteface on slot 4 (which has it's own bus) in the Dual 2 and Dual 2.5 G5s.

 

[flyingstudio]

Hi guys

am slightly confused by this reply about the dual 1.8 having only one buss for all the PCI slots. I had no end of issues and problems running UAD and LOGIC with a MOTU 2408 on a dual 1.8 and in the end the only solution seemed to be to do with which slots to put the various cards in because of there being 2 PCI busses (or so this forum informed me)

Is this to do with newer machines, I had one of the early dual 1.8s (a G5)

Just adding this in case the dual 1.8 people experience the horrendous problems I had and the terrible amount of studio time I wasted on it (and I think others had similar nightmares)

 

[UAJames]

Yes, the original model Dual 1.8ghz G5s, which were only made for a short amount of time, did have a Dual PCI bus, which also had PCI-X. The newest Dual 1.8Ghz G5s are not PCI-X and do not have dual PCI buses. I took for granted that he had the newer one

 

[F5D]

So, do the firewire- and pci- bus work independently in PowerMac G5 DP 1.8 rev B? I'm thinking of purchasing a firewire audio interface if it won't affect the performance of my dsp-cards. I will use maybe 2 poco's and 1 uad in the pci bus.

 

[UAJames]

Yes, FW is controlled exclusively by the host CPU where as PCI isn't. You can actually have the potential for more instability with FW interface than PCI for this very reason. If you are running a harder session (high host loads) with lots of tracks and VIs and such, you have a much greater potential for clicks/pops/dropouts/audio engine overloards with FW than with PCI. This is more of an issue with multiple cards in PCI-X G5s, but I just wanted to throw that out there. If you are going to be recording to FW drives too, this would make it worse.

 

[F5D]

Thanks for the answer UAJames.

I won't use any firewire drives. The system will be something like this:

-G5 DP1.8 revB
-2GB DDR400
-2x250GB HDD
-1x uad1
-2x poco
-maybe a MOTU 828 mk2?

I wouldn't need many inputs/outpus of the 828, just 4 channels in (1 stereo + 2 mono) and 1 stereo output for the monitors.

I would also use a buffer size of 256-512 samples.

Any ideas if this would work in Logic 7?

At the moment I'm still waiting for the logic7pro to arrive in Finland so I haven't tested my new machine in any way. Now I have an RME HDSP9632 + 1 poco but I will need an UAD1 and another poco so I must switch the RME to a firewire audio interface to free 1 pci slot..

 

[UAJames]

Hi FSD,
Theoretically that should work fine. The in/out count unfortuntely will not have an effect since there is no way to disable the analog in/outs on MOTU FW devices like you can with their PCI based devices. Keep in mind that you will get better performance overall with a buffer size of at least 512, especially when mixing with the UAD-1 and PoCo plugins as this is easier on the computer as a whole. It should operate fine with L7 as for the most part, the audio engine didn't change much from L6. I don't have any direct experience with the RME firewire stuff, but their PCI stuff is rock solid and their drivers are some of the best in general, of course nothing taken away from the 828mkII, I use one myself

 

[flyingstudio]

Thanks for your input here James

I didn't realise using FW drives could be an issue. I have been going crazy trying to resolve click problems mainly by relocating cards, connections and changing settings but am still using a Lacie FW drive.

What are the alternatives to using FW drives?