Gearslutz.com - View Single Post - Is the RME Fireface 800 connected with Firewire 800 as fast as PCI-Express?

majortom · 30th May 2007

I guess when the number of tracks you're recording exceeds the bandwidth of the interface, you'll have problems. They'd probably manifest as dropouts.

I did some calculations a while back. A stereo 96/24 track requires about 4.39 Mbits/s of bandwidth to record. So, even with a PCI interface which has a theoretical max of 127 MBytes/sec and let's say a real bandwidth of half that, the interface should have enough bandwidth to record 100 simultaneous tracks or more. Even with other stuff on the bus, your disk drive or something else will probably crap out before your interface does.

So, that's why I say bandwidth of the interface is probably not the most important concern. But, I've been wrong before.

30th May 2007	#16
majortom Lives for gear Joined: Jul 2006 Location: NYC Posts: 530	I guess when the number of tracks you're recording exceeds the bandwidth of the interface, you'll have problems. They'd probably manifest as dropouts. I did some calculations a while back. A stereo 96/24 track requires about 4.39 Mbits/s of bandwidth to record. So, even with a PCI interface which has a theoretical max of 127 MBytes/sec and let's say a real bandwidth of half that, the interface should have enough bandwidth to record 100 simultaneous tracks or more. Even with other stuff on the bus, your disk drive or something else will probably crap out before your interface does. So, that's why I say bandwidth of the interface is probably not the most important concern. But, I've been wrong before.