# Future-proofing: Best replacement for RME Hammerfall 9652 (PCI)?



## JohnG (Apr 17, 2017)

Hi all,

I have to replace one of my slave PCs and am hoping for advice on what interface and /or motherboard to buy. 

I have been using PCI-based RME Hammerfall 9652 interfaces forever on my PCs and they are perfect for what I need. Sadly, however, it appears that none of the modern motherboards support PCI configurations, alas. 

My goal is a new 64 GB RAM slave PC and my interfaces into my Pro Tools computer are Digital 192s, which accommodate light pipe. I was planning on at least 3 light pipe outs from the new slave PC. I favour RME and prefer PCI or PCIe cards if such a thing exists.

Any suggestions about interfaces?

Thanks,

John


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## chimuelo (Apr 17, 2017)

John there are plenty of Industrial strength boards using Intel chipsets out there that have PCI 32bit slots.
They're built to last years in 24/7 use.
But if you must upgrade RME RayDat with newest Total Mix on PCI-e 1X gets used by most guys I work with.
I eventually must go with UAD or RME as my drivers have a few years left before becoming obsolete.
Whichever mixer app is best automated I will go with.
So far both seem to lack automation required for what I need.

RME drivers are rock solid too.


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## JohnG (Apr 17, 2017)

chimuelo said:


> John there are plenty of Industrial strength boards using Intel chipsets out there that have PCI 32bit slots.
> They're built to last years in 24/7 use.



I have been searching for one high and low -- do you have a recommended board chim?


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## Leon Willett (Apr 17, 2017)

ahhhhh the RME Hammerfall 9652! that brings back memories 

I'm out of the loop so I can't give motherboard advice, but I just want to throw it out there that and old OS (like win 7) can be gloriously stable, and perhaps this idea could help breathe more years of life into hardware you like, in general.


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## JohnG (Apr 17, 2017)

http://motu.com/products/avb/lp32


Leon Willett said:


> old OS (like win 7) can be gloriously stable,



Very true, but the old motherboards I have can't hold even 32 GB of RAM, let alone 64. Tragically!

I have a stack of the 9652s and will have possibly three surplus ones on my hands if I go to the Raydat card.

anyone try the new Motu 112D? It looks pretty awesome, plus it includes Word Clock and MADI.


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## chimuelo (Apr 17, 2017)

I'm looking right now.


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## chimuelo (Apr 17, 2017)

http://www.advantech.com/products/1-2jkkgc/aimb-505/mod_baade54e-d2b0-4fee-8339-f02f0a63f6b8

32GBs and 1 x PCI 32bit. Dual LAN.
But a fast i7 keeps you in the groove.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Apr 17, 2017)

I would try to stay away from PCIe if you want to be future-proof but at the same time, slave interfaces in general will probably be obsolete pretty soon with more networking solutions becoming available.

Have you considered the RME Digiface USB? It's half the price of the Raydat and offers the same I/O. From what I've heard (Trevor Morris posted about it when he moved to the trashcan and had to get a USB RME interface), USB and TB can't offer the same low latency as PCIe but I'm not sure how much the difference actually is. I would try one out and see.


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## JohnG (Apr 17, 2017)

chimuelo said:


> http://www.advantech.com/products/1-2jkkgc/aimb-505/mod_baade54e-d2b0-4fee-8339-f02f0a63f6b8
> 
> 32GBs and 1 x PCI 32bit. Dual LAN.
> But a fast i7 keeps you in the groove.



That looks pretty good, chimuelo. I'm hoping I can find a mobo that can support 64 GB and retain PCI.

Otherwise I am going to re-think the entire setup, maybe ditch hardware audio path at last. Still a puzzle how to get the audio from the main mac and slave PCs, on the one hand, into the second Mac that houses Pro Tools HD, on the other.


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## JohnG (Apr 17, 2017)

this motherboard looks interesting:

http://www.advantech.com/products/1-2jkkfi/aimb-785/mod_9527911e-59ac-4ad2-babe-878e3e9b39b0



Gerhard Westphalen said:


> Have you considered the RME Digiface USB?



Thanks Gerhard -- I will check that out.


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## chimuelo (Apr 17, 2017)

Yep.
64GBs too...


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Apr 17, 2017)

JohnG said:


> Otherwise I am going to re-think the entire setup, maybe ditch hardware audio path at last. Still a puzzle how to get the audio from the main mac and slave PCs, on the one hand, into the second Mac that houses Pro Tools HD, on the other.



Why not use VEP? Either just into your main DAW or connected to PT and then with the main DAW just triggering midi. With the first option you can just batch export into PT however many stems you want. With the second option everything goes directly into PT with an unlimited number of channels. Both options don't need any hardware (aside from the main outs from the DAWs going to monitors).


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## chimuelo (Apr 17, 2017)

Looking for server boards for AMD Ryzen (leaked info) from Gigabyte and ASRock I stumbled on this beautiful motherboard.

http://b2b.gigabyte.com/Server-Motherboard/MW31-SP0-rev-10#ov

The new V6 Xeon E3 1275 with iGPU is a great CPU and the C236 chipset works really well as I have some friends with V5s that are using live orchestral templates.
V5s run 200MHz slower but the newer Xeons are damn cheap since Ryzens came out.


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## AlexRuger (Apr 17, 2017)

JohnG said:


> Still a puzzle how to get the audio from the main mac and slave PCs, on the one hand, into the second Mac that houses Pro Tools HD, on the other.



Audio from VEP back to the sequencer Mac over ethernet, and then all audio from the sequencer into Pro Tools however you choose to do it (I prefer MADI when budget allows).


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## samphony (Apr 17, 2017)

@JohnG you might also consider MOTU AVB or Dante to route audio between your PC and Pro Tools!


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## JohnG (Apr 17, 2017)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> Why not use VEP? ... the main DAW just triggering midi. .... everything goes directly into PT with an unlimited number of channels. Both options don't need any hardware (aside from the main outs from the DAWs going to monitors).



Hi Gerhard -- what you wrote is what I want to do; using VE Pro would solve a lot of problems and reduce latency. I don't understand how I get audio from the PCs and the main DAW Mac into the Pro Tools Mac. Right now I monitor through Pro Tools all the time so I can hear what's going on.

A couple of people have said I could get the audio back into the Pro Tools computer -- I know how to do that by printing files but I don't want to go that route. I would like to keep it as is, so I can monitor audio through PT. Also I have a hardware reverb that goes through the PT interfaces.

Here's the setup now:


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## JohnG (Apr 17, 2017)

And thank you to everyone helping!

chimuelo, if I stay with hardware I'm getting that board!


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## JohnG (Apr 17, 2017)

AlexRuger said:


> Audio from VEP back to the sequencer Mac over ethernet, and then all audio from the sequencer into Pro Tools however you choose to do it (I prefer MADI when budget allows).



I am feeling dense, Alex, but can you explain how this works physically? How does VE Pro gather everything?


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Apr 17, 2017)

JohnG said:


> I am feeling dense, Alex, but can you explain how this works physically? How does VE Pro gather everything?



Normally it's audio+midi between the slaves and main DAW using only ethernet with VEP. Virtually unlimited channels and midi ports. Then DAW to PT with whatever hardware you need (Avid cards if you want more than 32 channels going into PT).

What I suggested earlier is an alternative (and slightly more complicated) way to use VEP. Basically VEP connects to PT so that all of the audio from the slaves is going directly into PT via the network. No physical I/O so you can have as many channels as you want (limited by PT's max number of voices/tracks). Then the main DAW sends midi to the slaves using any other midi-over-network solution to trigger the sounds in VEP.

Edit: looking at your diagram, it would basically be the same setup except with those audio connections from the slaves being replaced by VEP. The connection would be between the slaves and PT (not to the main DAW as people normally have it set up). You'd use the same midi over lan as you're using now. There would be no changes to your DP setup. The only audio connection you might still need going to PT is from DP in case you need to run any audio out of that. If you don't need any PT HD features then you could just get the latest PT non-HD as you wouldn't need any Avid hardware for this setup as long as you don't want +32 channels from DP. Maybe put one of the Hammerfall cards into the PT computer and use that for PT.


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## JohnG (Apr 17, 2017)

Thanks Gerhard. I will explore that further. With Pro Tools HD you have to have interfaces connected in order for it even to launch -- like the world's largest dongle. But that doesn't necessarily mean you can't use VE Pro as well. 

I will check it out.

Kind regards,

John


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## Nick Batzdorf (Apr 17, 2017)

I dunno. To me "future-proof [any computer card]" is an oxymoron. It's true that PCI and PCIe have had a long run on PCs, but internal cards are the last vestige of the extinct 2-year tail-chasing computer cycle.

***

By the way, after years of hanging on every word Digidesign uttered, I've lost the thread. Is Pro Tools HD different from Pro Tools HD10 (or HD11, HD12), i.e. is it the hardware version? The version I have, HD10, doesn't require audio hardware.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Apr 17, 2017)

JohnG said:


> With Pro Tools HD you have to have interfaces connected in order for it even to launch



I was just saying that if you're using VEP then you don't need any Avid hardware (which I assume is what's stopping you from upgrading to the latest PT) so you could upgrade to 12 and use a Hammerfall instead for it. Non-HD if you don't need the HD features and HD if you do (which doesn't require any hardware). Looks like right now you're using less than 32 channels so there's no need for any Avid hardware and all of the 32 channels on the RME would be free for the reverb and DP.


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## JohnG (Apr 18, 2017)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> By the way, after years of hanging on every word Digidesign uttered, I've lost the thread.... The version I have, HD10, doesn't require audio hardware.



Hi Nick,

My version of PT won't launch if the hardware interfaces are not turned on. That doesn't necessarily mean that I have to actually _use_ those interfaces, but with PT 9.3 they were still nerfing the software if you didn't use their hardware.



Gerhard Westphalen said:


> Looks like right now you're using less than 32 channels



I know what you mean Gerhard about channels, but in PT-speak, a "channel" is a mono channel. I am using 29 stereo channels as inputs, plus my hardware reverb, so I would need 2x that in PT-land (or about 64). Luckily, as you know, that is a magic number because it matches the MADI standard.

To your other point, I confirmed that you are right -- you no longer are required to use Avid hardware with PT. Thanks for that!

So then my question is whether one can use VE Pro to port all audio in from multiple slave PCs and the other Mac. If so, I would do it right away. 

I really appreciate all the help, guys. 

Kind regards,

John

[post edited for updated info]


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## Nick Batzdorf (Apr 18, 2017)

Ah, PT 9. Yeah, that requires the hardware.


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## kunst91 (Apr 18, 2017)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> I would try to stay away from PCIe if you want to be future-proof but at the same time, slave interfaces in general will probably be obsolete pretty soon with more networking solutions becoming available.
> 
> Have you considered the RME Digiface USB? It's half the price of the Raydat and offers the same I/O. From what I've heard (Trevor Morris posted about it when he moved to the trashcan and had to get a USB RME interface), USB and TB can't offer the same low latency as PCIe but I'm not sure how much the difference actually is. I would try one out and see.



Trevor actually had problems with the USB interface and ditched it for a magma thunderbolt chassis to house an RME MADI FX card


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## JohnG (Apr 21, 2017)

Hi all -- just to round out the discussion:

1. It appears there is no way to do what I am proposing -- have VE Pro run everything from one computer -- if you have a separate Pro Tools computer _and_ you want to monitor through that machine while writing.

2. One clever guy (PM me if you want his contact info) at Sweetwater suggested that I run the PC slaves not from my DAW but from the Pro Tools computer. There are some potential upgrade issues there for me personally because I am running an old version of Pro Tools, but for someone with a recent version (11 or 12) it could work well. Then audio comes into PT from Vienna. You would still need MidiOverLAN CP or some other software (with my setup) to _send_ midi to the PC slaves, but anyway, it is a clever idea.

3. It would cost me something like $10-20k to upgrade my setup beyond Pro Tools 10, since I'd need to replace absolutely everything, including the Mac, cards -- all of it. Since I am not an engineer, and typically I hand off my PT sessions to an engineer for mixing, I am not pursuing that. I use PT for tracking and recording soloists, and for basic mixing. For that, PT 7, 8, or 9 are all fine.

Thank you to all who tried to solve this puzzle. If you _don't_ have a separate PT setup, or you are willing to record stems in your DAW and import them to PT, the problem is easily solved.

Kind regards and thanks again,

John


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## AlexRuger (Apr 21, 2017)

Yes, you can monitor through Pro Tools. To keep it simple, the audio should just come back into your sequencer first before passing through PT. Though you could have it go straight from the PC to PT if you don't want to use the network to return audio.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Apr 21, 2017)

JohnG said:


> 1. It appears there is no way to do what I am proposing -- have VE Pro run everything from one computer -- if you have a separate Pro Tools computer _and_ you want to monitor through that machine while writing.



I'm not sure what you mean. All of that is possible. I used to do all of that with having VEP on a slave coming into Cubase and then going adat to PT on another computer and always monitoring through PT. I've never owned Avid hardware.

You can get VEP send all of the audio directly into PT over the network while triggering from DP as I've mentioned earlier.



JohnG said:


> 3. It would cost me something like $10-20k to upgrade my setup beyond Pro Tools 10, since I'd need to replace absolutely everything, including the Mac, cards -- all of it. Since I am not an engineer, and typically I hand off my PT sessions to an engineer for mixing, I am not pursuing that. I use PT for tracking and recording soloists, and for basic mixing. For that, PT 7, 8, or 9 are all fine.



But do you really need HD? Unless you're working in surround or dubbing films and need those automation features, then you probably don't. As I also mentioned before, you can run as many audio channels from VEP as you want so you don't need any hardware, just a single Hammerfall on it for audio from DP and your reverb. You'd have 32 channels just for those 2 things. The only cost would be PT12 ($600?). If you really do need HD then I believe it's $2000. That's it. No hardware.

Back when you actually needed hardware, I know a composer who bought a native rig and then just sold all of the hardware because he just wanted the HD license and then just used a 32 channel interface.


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## JohnG (Apr 22, 2017)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> The only cost would be PT12 ($600?)



That is very interesting.

Just to clarify -- you're suggesting to use VE Pro on the DAW Mac to send midi to, and receive audio from the PCs back into DP. I then stream hardware audio out to the PT computer in real time so I can still monitor through PT. So the only hardware audio would be out from the DAW Mac and into the PT Mac.

Is that all correct?

[edit: deleted other part of post]


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## JohnG (Apr 22, 2017)

Update. According to an autumn 2016 article in Sound On Sound, the 32 track limit appears to be mono tracks:


*What’s A Track?*
Audio tracks are the destination of incoming audio streams (voices) from your interface(s), so the number of active tracks is limited both by the maximum number of voices in your system and the maximum number of inputs. As you can see in the table, a Pro Tools system has a maximum number of mono audio tracks that can play back or record audio at once. There is also a separate limitation on the number of tracks that can be in record simultaneously, and this is very different between Pro Tools HD and Pro Tools. For example, at base sample rates, a Pro Tools session can have up to 128 tracks, but only 32 input channels are available — even if your interface offers more physical inputs than this. These 32 channels can be used to feed any combination of mono and stereo tracks, with a stereo track using two channels — other multi-channel formats are not supported in non-HD Pro Tools — *meaning that you can only ever record to a maximum of 32 mono tracks simultaneously."
*
http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/voice-track-io-counts-pro-tools

That said, your idea might still work, if I can figure out how to free up enough PCI slots on the DAW Mac for extra audio cards. [edit: I can solve that by adding two more 2408mk3 interfaces, which would allow enough light pipe outs from that Mac. 

So in that case, I'd keep the PT9 HD setup I have and retain the 64-track PT recording capacity that I have currently, sending audio out from the DAW Mac from the 2408s into my existing AVID hardware.]


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Apr 22, 2017)

JohnG said:


> That is very interesting.
> 
> Just to clarify -- you're suggesting to use VE Pro on the DAW Mac to send midi to, and receive audio from the PCs back into DP. I then stream hardware audio out to the PT computer in real time so I can still monitor through PT. So the only hardware audio would be out from the DAW Mac and into the PT Mac.
> 
> ...



Nope, not what I'm suggesting. I'll try to clarify in your new thread but the audio from the slaves would go directly into PT (you don't lose any of the precious 32 I/O channels). This would leave all 32 for anything you want to send (not your slaves) from DP and the reverb. That's why you don't need PT HD. You'd have hundreds of channels available for the slaves plus 32.


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## chimuelo (Apr 23, 2017)

AEEON distributor sent me a great Windows 7/8.1 board for i7 3000/4000 series CPUs.

http://www.aaeon.com/en/p/atx-imba-q77


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## JohnG (May 2, 2017)

found an ASRock board with a PCI slot. Z270 Pro has one PCI slot and can handle the i7-7700k and 64GB of RAM. Home and dry.

I can hardly believe it, actually. Didn't think any new non-server boards had PCI slots. Some of the server boards don't, apparently, run the i7 at full speed, either, so that presents other issues.

http://www.asrock.com/MB/Intel/Z270 Pro4/index.asp


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