Two RME madi cards? 128 ch multitrack?

[huub]

Hi remotesters!

I'm investigating the possibility to multitrack 128 channels..
For our pyramix adding a second mykerinos card with madi daughterboard should do the trick.
From what I hear, it should also be possible to add a second rme madi card to our backup reaper pc..

Anyone any experience with one of these set ups?

please do share!

Thanks,
Huub

[HughH]

Hello,
I don't use either of those setups so if you'd like me to delete this post, that's ok.
We use a Nuendo PC from ADKProAudio with dual RME madi cards and it's been really nice. 128 tracks recording to a Raid 0+1 and the disk meter doesn't even move. The hardware can certainly handle it.
I'd suggest you try the respective companies' forums for suggestions.

H

[huub]

No, all info with regards to dual madi is good! Thanks.
Disk speed is one thing I'm considering..
Wondering if 1 fast disk might work for 128 track 48 khz?

[mpdonahue]

Huub,
We've been beta testing the new SSL MADIextreme 128 card here and it is a pretty good option for what you're trying to do. It has two Fiber MADI ports and fits in a single PCIe slot. List price Here in the USA is $1499.
The RME has some more facility with the Copper I/O and wordclock options, but the SSL is ideal for those trying to get reliable high track count. The thing that makes me nervous about using 2 RME MADI cards in a single system is that there is actually no master system control over the 2 cards. They operate from separate control panels and there is the ability to set them differently and end up with 64 channels of junk.
The Pyramix is great, we're putting 2 systems into the Mariinsky in St Petersburg that come configured with 2 copper MADI and 1 SDIF boards to do 32/40 channel DSD recordings. With Masscore, the DMA bugs are under control now for these high track count recordings.
All the best,
-mark

[huub]

Well, Mark, we already talked about it on the pramix forum, but hey, I'm just happy with our new 128 channels dual madi pyramix system, I feel like sharing this with the slutz

128 channel BWAV recording is nooo problem. as long as the recording is shared to 2 drives..

This saturday I'm recording a concert at Ahoy, Rotterdam..
It will be a channel or 96 and Billy Bush is coming over to produce the DVD recording, cool stuff!

I'll try and do a little gig report, but making pictures is usually the last priority whilst recording a show

Huub

[LX3]

Quite relevant for me, as my track count is ever-growing. Been looking at dual RME MADI here too.

I would be fascinated to see what your input list is like for this weekend. 96 tracks for a "country" artist... Does she have an orchestra with her?

Are you guys monitoring via the outputs of the recorder? If so, are you using a MADI-in console, or mousing around in software to mix and solo things (which is one of my least favourite pastimes).

Thanks, look forward to hearing about your weekend. Have a good one.

[bishopthomas]

128 channels tracked on a computer!? I can't imagine. I've never been successful recording 16 tracks.

[huub]

Well, I find computers (As long as you really know what you're doing and thus are a bit of a computernerd to be very reliable recording devices.. In fact I am very happy to not have to use those godawful tascam tapes ever again..

The concert has two drumkits (one for sort of an acoustic set) and some channels for banjo, mandoline, those kind of extra instruments.. nothing crazy.

that's why we got the 2nd madi card really, so many DVD recordings of normal 'band' bands have at least 56 channels,most bands have some kind of 8 channel backing track, add ambience, and 64 channels is just not enough..

I'm putting the pyramix as an insert on my channels, so we listen through the multitrack for easy replay of soundchecks.. The backup (in this case 4 tascam mx2424's) is fed from direct outputs put before the pyramix insert..

Huub

[huub]

Hmm.. The concert recording was not 100% succesful, during soundcheck I discovered a horrendous bug in pyramix (a known bug apparently?!) .. If you split Bwav recording to more than one drive or folder, all files get completely mixed up and some files get lost!!!

Djeeezus...

Luckily the show recording (to one drive) went fine....

I'm really pissed off at merging for not giving a HUUUUGE warning about this bug...
Or disabling the option to split to separate drives when recording wav

or GETTING RID OF THE BUG!!!!!

huub

[Billy Bush]

ahhh.. but what's important to note is that you figured it out after soundcheck!!!

i still can't believe how weird that was!

[LX3]

Boy, that's a screamer of a bug, especially for such a highly-regarded platform.

(Which gets me thinking... can you even get Nuendo to write audio to two different folders/volumes at the same time?)

Must have been a scary moment when you discovered the soundcheck wasn't playing back right... How long did it take to figure it out? Thank heavens for the agility of modern-day drives.

[videoteque]

Originally Posted by huub

Hmm.. The concert recording was not 100% succesful, during soundcheck I discovered a horrendous bug in pyramix

Fortunately you found it before the show!!!!

If an audio engineer can't trust pyramix, what can you trust???

[huub]

Originally Posted by Billy Bush

ahhh.. but what's important to note is that you figured it out after soundcheck!!!

i still can't believe how weird that was!

I know...
Well, I became paranoid after this obviously and checked all individual files from the main show and I'm happy to say all is perfect.. The right label for the right track, nothing missing, correct timestamp..

Phew!

[0VU]

Originally Posted by huub

Hmm.. The concert recording was not 100% succesful, during soundcheck I discovered a horrendous bug in pyramix (a known bug apparently?!) .. If you split Bwav recording to more than one drive or folder, all files get completely mixed up and some files get lost!!!

Djeeezus...

Luckily the show recording (to one drive) went fine....

I'm really pissed off at merging for not giving a HUUUUGE warning about this bug...
Or disabling the option to split to separate drives when recording wav

or GETTING RID OF THE BUG!!!!!

Is this a new bug?

I had some trouble with apparently missing tracks on a project last year (using VS5) about which I posted a long query to the Merging board but it turned out to be a problem with disc fragmentation screwing up replay and an intermittent problem reading the disc rather than anything to do with recording. All files were there, despite it sometimes appearing that some were missing. I had one system recording 128 track PMF and another doing 128 track BWF (one track per file across two folders on separate drives). Neither machine would play back all tracks simultaneously - sometimes stalling, sometimes unable to find/play certain tracks - whereas a fairly basic laptop running Sequoia could play 128 tracks after copying (hence defragmenting) them to a pocket FW400/5400RPM drive. When the audio on the Pyramix machines was defragmented (by copying to an external drive, formatting the internal audio drives and copying back) - both systems played back all tracks. (Through all this, a Nuendo system (with two RME cards), which we'd brought along as a backup backup, behaved perfectly - just doing what it was supposed to.)

As a result of all this, and despite now having two dual MADI Pyramix systems of my own which seem to work ok, I still feel slightly nervous about Pyramix and never run it on my own jobs without at least one other format of backup backup. The whole Pyramix thing just feels like Sonic Solutions did when I used to use it on location in the early 1990s - a very powerful and flexible system, capable of things which other systems just won't do, but internally pushing too hard at the limitations of its hardware capability, and with slightly too many 'issues' in it's software, ever to be relied upon. Even though it's never actually let me down, it's given me a few 'two cuppa moments' and the odd 'is it/isn't it?' feeling so I can't lose a slight feeling of nervousness whenever I use it,

It's not a cheap system to buy or maintain, with (compared to many others) some quite costly hardware, and software in which some key features seem to be chargable options, and, despite it (so far) always working out, every time I use it, there's a niggling feeling that I got the recording in spite of Pyramix rather than because of it. I also have much cheaper systems (Sequoia/RME) with which I'm more comfortable, and SADiE LRX2 (not much cheaper but seemingly far more solid, though limited to 64 channels) none of which has missed a beat or caused so much as a raised eyebrow. Pyramix definitely has a name, plus some unique capabilities, and some clients ask for it specifically, but when it's left to me, I'm starting to prefer using other systems for the lower stress levels.

I know there are lots of happy Pyramix users out there (even I actually like it for mixing and some editing) and I can't say that it's ever completely dumped on me but after a year of running my own systems (so not relying on the unknowns of hired-in systems) I don't yet feel that as a high track count (64+) live acquisition tool it's as reliable and low stress as it should be for its fairly premium pricing. Of course, that might just be down to my very risk averse and nervous disposition

[huub]

I'm not sure if this is a new bug.. Merging has said to my local distributor they plan to solve it in VERSION7!!! Simply not acceptable...
Pyramix has, thusfar, been 100% reliable.. I will configure my drives as RAID, to get speeds neccesary for large track counts, and after that I'll trust pyramix again for well, at least 90% ...

[huub]

As a small update: anyone looking to record large track numbers; my experience is to use fairly small and fast drives that are EMPTY (no fragmentation), software RAID0 also makes drives faster..
For 128 track recordings I now use 2 fast 140GB drives in software RAID0, no problems either reading or writing..

I use software raid because it's a bit more flexible than hardware raid..
For up to 70 tracks most normal modern single drives will do, again; EMPTY drives are way way faster..

(All in 24bit 48Khz Bwav)

huub

[klaukholm]

I just wish merging would come out with a single daughter card with 128 IO (two in two out)

[mpdonahue]

Originally Posted by huub

As a small update: anyone looking to record large track numbers; my experience is to use fairly small and fast drives that are EMPTY (no fragmentation), software RAID0 also makes drives faster..
For 128 track recordings I now use 2 fast 140GB drives in software RAID0, no problems either reading or writing..
I use software raid because it's a bit more flexible than hardware raid..
For up to 70 tracks most normal modern single drives will do, again; EMPTY drives are way way faster..
(All in 24bit 48Khz Bwav)
huub

I've found that hardware RAID performance is light years ahead of software RAID. I've had nothing but bad luck with software RAID, (File corruption and broken pairs),but YMMV.
We've been putting 1TB pairs (2TB Total) in all our acquisition systems and have never had a single problem with any of them. We back up the files daily so as to not have to spend hours copying files, but a 1TB copy to an SATA drive takes about 45 min. Also, we've recorded 40 channels DSD to a single 7200 RPM drive on several occasions with no problems. You just need to go into the drives Hardware Properties> Policy and choose "Optimize for best performance". This turns on the write cache and requires you to shut the computer down to remove the drive. You will typically see a 25-30% improvement in performance. Also, you should avoid like the plague any Jmicron RAID controllers. They are a huge problem when you are using the PCI/PCIe bus for audio. We always disable these in BIOS first thing. Intel ICH9 and 10 controllers with the Intel Matrix RAID Manager is the way to go, IMNSHO.

Originally Posted by klaukholm

I just wish merging would come out with a single daughter card with 128 IO (two in two out)

If you can make do with 96 1fs tracks, for straight acquisition I would use Native with the SSL MADI Extreme 128. It is a real bummer that Merging limits the track count on Native. We're still looking for a dumb recorder app that will sync to code, make interleaved files with large track count on a native system. Reaper looked promising, but the kludgy interface and mono files makes it a non starter. Something like Boom recorder that recorded more than 64 channels of interleaved files on a PC would be perfect.
It doesn't sound like rocket science to get something like the RME Digicheck recorder to read code like Boom and Reaper and make interleaved WAV64 or RF64 files..... Maybe Somebody Like SSL/Soundscape could do this (Fadi, are you still out there listening?....)

All the best,
-mark

[huub]

Thanks Mark , always good to read your experiences!

[Mats H]

Originally Posted by huub

As a small update: anyone looking to record large track numbers; my experience is to use fairly small and fast drives that are EMPTY (no fragmentation), software RAID0 also makes drives faster..
For 128 track recordings I now use 2 fast 140GB drives in software RAID0, no problems either reading or writing..

I use software raid because it's a bit more flexible than hardware raid..
For up to 70 tracks most normal modern single drives will do, again; EMPTY drives are way way faster..

(All in 24bit 48Khz Bwav)

huub

Data rate isn't much of an issue when recording. 128 tracks at 24 bit 48 KHz translates to 18 MB/s. It's the simultaneous writing of 128 files that taxes the hard drive. While testing my new rig I recorded 96 tracks of 24 bit 192 KHz audio to a pair of 36 GB SCSI 15k rpm drives in RAID0, using an old HP PCI-X card. The computer was bogged down but I could not do this with regular SATA drives. The testing rig was not really state of the art but I believe that access times matter more when writing a lot of files at the same time than transfer rate.

If using DIGICHECK by RME, you basically write to one multichannel file. 18 MB/s shouldn't be an issue even with 5400 rpm drives. I've only tried recording 20 tracks of 2496 onto my laptop but it wasn't an issue at all. Now Digicheck isn't really a production friendly piece of software but it shows that recording to a single file reduces the strain on the hard drive. Which can be a blessing at times.

My opinion of software RAID is that it is unreliable, especially with drives not made for RAID. When one drive gets a timeout, it becomes unaccessible until the RAID set is rebuilt. The problem with RAID0 is that the RAID set gets screwed too easily. I had a RAID1 set of two 750 GB drives go corrupt because of timeouts in data transfer and the whole raid set got corrupt. Fortunately the data was just mirrored in a very basic way so the data was intact. It was with a common intel motherboard chipset.