What is the algorithm? I've asked before how to figure out bandwidth/channels, and you seem to be the only one who can answer!
My confusion is between gigabits and gigabytes.
If you Google "audio data rate calculator" or similar terms you'll find lots of online calculators, but they're usually oriented at calculating the required storage space per hour or minute of audio. (You can always just divide the per-hour number by 3600, or the per-minute number by 60 to get the per-second number.)
But I prefer to attempt to get the results manually.
Here are some conversion ratios I'm using for reference:
One byte = 8 bits
One Gigabyte = 1,073,741,824 bytes, or 8,589,934,592 bits
One 24-bit sample = 24 bits (duh) = 3 bytes
One second of one channel of 24bit/48kHz audio = 1,152,000 bits = 144,000 bytes
So here is the formula I wind up using in a simple calculator:
Gigabytes per second data throughput for one audio channel = sample rate (times) word length (divided by) 8 bits per byte (divided by) 1,073,741,824 bytes per gigabyte.
So, for one channel of 24bit / 48kHz audio, we'd have: 48,000 samples per second (times) 24 bits per sample (divided by) 8 bits in each byte (divided by) 1,073,741,824 bytes in each Gigabyte = 0.00013411 Gigabytes per second, or about 0.134 Megabytes per second. (Obviously double that number for 96k).
For 10,000 channels of 24bit / 48kHz audio, we'd have: 1.3411 Gigabytes per second.
So with all 128 channels of a MOTU AVB audio rig lit up in each direction (for 256 channels total) we'd only be using 0.03433 Gigabytes per second.
If we're talking about SSDs and sample playback voices, the numbers don't fundamentally change but, as Evil Dragon has mentioned in other threads, other SSD performance factors like "random 4k reads" come into play, so I'll leave those calculations for another day!
I think that's why the MOTU guy chuckled when I asked if the AVB rig would saturate the TB2 bus, and if the UAD2 could live on the same TB2 bus with no problems. Regardless of how many channels are configured to go back and forth on the AVB network (which is on a separate CAT5 cable setup), the AVB rig is only providing 128 channels in each direction to the host via TB, so that number is capped at 256 channels of total load on the TB bus. All of the subsequent AVB interfaces spread across your building will be spraying their data to each other via CAT5 and there's only one interface connected via TB to your host computer, so it's that "primary" interface that sorts out and condenses all those other interfaces' data streams down into a single 128+128 channel stream, and that's what gets crammed down the TB bus.
I don't know the data structure of the UAD stuff intimately; I've been assuming that a single instance of a single mono plugin just needs one channel in and one channel out - if they've done something that causes a single mono plugin to use more than two channels' worth of data, then.... well, that would be weird. Plus I don't know how it deals with side chain stuff - like, does it need to send the side chain audio down the TB bus also? Anyway, according to the UAD chart, the most instances of any plugin that can run on a single UAD2 Octo is 800 mono channels of the LittleLabs VOG bass enhancer tool. If you put 800 mono VOG instances on a mix (and why wouldn't you?) that would use up 0.214576 Gigabytes per second. So even with eight UAD2 Octo's running a total of 6,400 instances of VOG (very common in trap music!) you'd still only be putting 1.7166 Gigabytes per second of data down the wire. That, plus a fully maxed-out AVB setup would still only put around 1.75 Gigabytes per second down the bus. No problem - so it's no longer surprising how a Dante or other audio-over-IP protocol can throw thousands of channels down a $10 CAT5 cable. Awesome.
The MOTU guy explained to me that the only folks who'd really be in danger of saturating the TB2 busses on the Mac Pro cylinder would be video guys, who need to ingest raw 8k footage at 60fps from the SSD drives they pull from a Red camera or stuff like that. The data rates these guys deal with are truly astounding. It all is really, if you think about it. Amazing stuff.