Duende and Fireface800

[JMWS]

What is the situation now with Duende? Is it more stable these days?

I have a Fireface800 PC DAW with Cubase 4 and I was wondering about getting a Duende, but I have my reservations. I fear it might not work properly with the FF800. Any success stories?

[eddierodriguez]

working fine, when duende has it´s own bus. and this bus has to be low used. most working configs have an extra fw-card pci or pci-e on the pci-lane that shares less with other components (like graphics card, usb-ports,...)

the ff800 should be on another fw-bus, but this can be the onboard-bus. it uses the bus not that intensive than the duende does. so it´s not that problem to use it on a more shared bus.

[DrDeltaM]

I'm actually using a Fireface800 and a Duende on my PowerMac G5, both on internal FW bus! In general this works great, tho on heavy loads, there are some minor issues now and then. I'll be adding a PCI FW-card probably anyway, tho I've been postponing that for months now already, as the need isn't that urgent

[JMWS]

My motherboard is Asus P5W64 Pro and it has 2xfirewire.

Will it be ok just to put the Fireface to the other and Duende to the other? Are these different buses?

(My PCI-E slots are reserverd for UAD cards).

[DrDeltaM]

Originally Posted by JMWS

My motherboard is Asus P5W64 Pro and it has 2xfirewire.

Will it be ok just to put the Fireface to the other and Duende to the other? Are these different buses?

(My PCI-E slots are reserverd for UAD cards).

Your motherboard has one Firewire bus as far as I can tell. But it also has 2 'old' PCI slots, in which you could place a PCI Firewire card if needed.
You could start out by trying to run the Fireface & Duende from the internal ports. If that doesn't work, just add the PCI FW card.

[JMWS]

Well my problem is that my mobo has four x16 PCI-E slots. Beneath them two PCI slots. The guy who built it, put the GPU in the upper PCI-E slot. so it´s watercooling tubes are blocking two other PCI-E slots, leaving only one free.

I have bought 4 UAD cards. I have now space only for one. But if I buy this PCI-E expansion (recommended by UA) from Cyclone, that cost 1100e . Yes that´s right, ridicilous price. I get all the 4 UADs working, without moving the GPU.

But with that same money I could buy the Duende and sell one UAD card. Multiplying the advantage in ten times having 32 new channels instead of the fourth UAD that only gives me few plugs more.
But then I would have to move the GPU to the bottom PCI-E slot, so that it will give space for the three upper slots for the three UADs. But in this case the watertubes of the GPU would block the PCI slots. So I can´t put the Duende into the PCI slots either with firewire card. The only place to put the Duende would be the second firewire port.

But that won´t work right? The Duende will be buggy as hell?

I guess my only solution is to buy the 1100e PCI-E expansion (I know there´s probably cheaper ones, Magmas or something, but I don´t want to take risks, ´cause I´ve read there´s issues on those, and UA isn´t even recommending those. And I´m already very worried that the UADs will have issues, ´cause I have the 3GB switch thingy) AND buy the Duende with firewire card!
But I really wouldn´t want to do that, since it goes way of my budjet.

So am I shit out of luck in this freaking complex situation, or do you have any ideas for me?!?!?

p.s. I can´t belive that in 2007 we still have to deal with this poop!!!

[DrDeltaM]

Duende and Fireface together on internal ports might work, hard to say in advance.

Solution is simple: dump the graphics card for a normal one. You don't really need such a card in a DAW anyway