PCI audio interfaces improve performance?

[JohnG]

I would be interesting to know what boards you are using? Are these boards still being made with PCI slots for modern chipsets?`

sort of. I just bought a second Gigabyte H370 HD3 mobo and a second i9-9900k CPU to go with it. The board does have a PCI slot but does not accommodate that CPU out of the box so you have to update the BIOS...

...and actually you can't do that (unless you have a spare 8th generation CPU lying around to install first, then update the BIOS, and only then install the i9).

So what do you do?

I actually drove out to Gigabyte with the first one to get it updated but I will probably either try to RMA or force one of my offspring to drive out there this second go-round. It's a pretty long drive.

It's also possible (no way to know ahead of time) that the new boards already have the BIOS updated; once you buy one and receive it, they can tell from the serial number if you call Gigabyte support, but it's sheer luck what Newegg or Amazon ship.

That's what I know.

Cheers,

John

 

[Nick Batzdorf]

I'm looking at my firewire Apollo as the potential bottleneck

No way. FireWire works absolutely fine.

My understanding is PCI/PCIe communication is going to be more efficient and so maybe I would see better performance in big projects. Has this been your experience?

My experience has been that internal cards become obsolete before you install them.

 

[JohnG]

@Buddy and @kitekrazy by the way, just for clarity, don't go buying PCIe or PCI audio cards because some other person (me or anyone) uses them. If I didn't already own them I seriously question whether I would buy them today.

Based on what I've read, I'd look very hard at VE Pro or Dante.

I already own five RME Hammerfall cards and all the hardware interfaces that go with them, so that's why I'm still using them. Not saying they are bad -- far from it -- but I am not recommending that anyone adopt that approach.

 

[Buddy]

@Buddy and @kitekrazy by the way, just for clarity, don't go buying PCIe or PCI audio cards because some other person (me or anyone) uses them. If I didn't already own them I seriously question whether I would buy them today.

Based on what I've read, I'd look very hard at VE Pro or Dante.

I already own five RME Hammerfall cards and all the hardware interfaces that go with them, so that's why I'm still using them. Not saying they are bad -- far from it -- but I am not recommending that anyone adopt that approach.

Thanks John, appreciate the insight very much. Maybe my one system approach, no matter how powerful, is a pipe-dream and I simply need to look at networking a second system to run the samples to get the load off the main system.

 

[Nick Batzdorf]

Based on what I've read, I'd look very hard at VE Pro

That's the thing: even a slave machine that can only run 50% of what your main machine can handle is a lot less expensive than swapping boards, processors, and interfaces in your main machine to gain 25% more performance.

Now, there are disadvantages - convenience being one, energy use being another - but it makes more sense to me (which is why I did it).

 

[Buddy]

That's the thing: even a slave machine that can only run 50% of what your main machine can handle is a lot less expensive than swapping boards, processors, and interfaces in your main machine to gain 25% more performance.

Now, there are disadvantages - convenience being one, energy use being another - but it makes more sense to me (which is why I did it).

What's the latency like on VePro? Can you elaborate on the convenience hit you're talking about?

 

[Nick Batzdorf]

What's the latency like on VePro? Can you elaborate on the convenience hit you're talking about?

Well, just that having to start up a second machine is less convenient than having everything on one.

The latency is comparable to having an interface on the second machine, but they publish the specs on their site (www.vsl.co.at). And there are adjustments - you set the number of host buffers (e.g. 128 samples, 256, etc.) as low as you can without bringing the machine to its knees.

VE Pro is fabulous.

 

[Synetos]

To slave or not to slave?

Well, what are you doing? Orchestral mockups? 1000+ Instruments? Or pop music with some VST stuff mixed in? The gear needs to match the project or at least be close to what you are thinking you want to do. Are you looking at mashing an ant with a hammer, or are you trying to slay a dragon with a butter knife?

I have/had 2 slaves along with my Master DAW. My Master is no weakling.

Now, I just bought the Waves Soundgrid Extreme server and it arrived 2 days ago. I offloaded my most demanding plugins. HUGE difference. This allowed me to move all my VST's back to my Master DAW and now I just run VEPRO in localhost mode. I have not come even close to using the 128GB of ram I have in my DAW.

My rig is now working awesomely! I run 48khz/64samples (~4.8ms RTL). I track mostly acoustic singer/songwriter type stuff and then layer on all kinds of VST instruments. But, our worship team does jam in the studio using IEM, and I need low latency for that stuff as well. I want stability and reasonable simplicity.

An example of the impact that the DSP server had: One instance of Waves H-Reverb used about 8-10% of my CPU according to the performance meter in Cubase. It dropped off by that much when I offloaded it to the DSP server. Sure, I could increase my sample rate, but I dont want to. I like working with lower latency since I layer instruments on by playing them on midi keyboard. That starts to get to sloppy when I increase latency.

Was the DSP worth it? Well, it cost me $2k, but my slave machines each cost me much more than that. Slave machines cant give me the DSP power that this thing can, no matter what I have tried to do to make offloading plugins work. Yes, I have had it work, but never in a way I thought was reliable. The DSP server just works. Hopefully the romance doesnt fade as the shinny new toy thing wears off.

Running VEP local host is super way to use the product! It is so worth the few hundred bucks to leverage the entire system and not rely on the DAW handling everything internally. Plus, You get to keep a standard set of instruments that can be common across many projects loaded up outside the project itself. Makes it fast to load and flip around to different project sessions.

I really prefer working on one machine. Less heat, less noise, less maintenance, etc. Less is more to me. I am a fan of one big ol' powerful machine.

 

[JohnG]

helpful post @Synetos -- envy your 64 buffer!

 

[Buddy]

To slave or not to slave?

Well, what are you doing? Orchestral mockups? 1000+ Instruments? Or pop music with some VST stuff mixed in? The gear needs to match the project or at least be close to what you are thinking you want to do. Are you looking at mashing an ant with a hammer, or are you trying to slay a dragon with a butter knife?

Can't we let the ants and dragons live out their days in peace?

I have a biggish template (500 tracks) for orchestral work and a slim one for more intimate arrangements. Kontakt, soft synths (NI, Arturia, etc.) and mix plugins = most of the load.

I have/had 2 slaves along with my Master DAW. My Master is no weakling.

Now, I just bought the Waves Soundgrid Extreme server and it arrived 2 days ago. I offloaded my most demanding plugins. HUGE difference. This allowed me to move all my VST's back to my Master DAW and now I just run VEPRO in localhost mode. I have not come even close to using the 128GB of ram I have in my DAW.

Hm. This is a very interesting idea. If Soundgrid did FF/Softube plugins, I'd jump over today. Still might as I use a fair bit of Waves stuff.

Running VEP local host is super way to use the product! It is so worth the few hundred bucks to leverage the entire system and not rely on the DAW handling everything internally. Plus, You get to keep a standard set of instruments that can be common across many projects loaded up outside the project itself. Makes it fast to load and flip around to different project sessions.

I really prefer working on one machine. Less heat, less noise, less maintenance, etc. Less is more to me. I am a fan of one big ol' powerful machine.

VEP localhost does sound very convenient, great lead

 

[Nathanael Iversen]

I use a PCIe card - the Focusrite RedNet Dante card. It will do 128ch of 48khz I/O at very low latency. Admittedly, I don't use 128ch, but I do use about 40ch of it, give or take, and it "just works". The ProTools HDX cards are crazy expensive - but they will do rock solid, high-density I/O without latency. Running high channel counts is likely not common. But when you do, bulletproof reliability and consistency is a thing you can get with PCIe. As observed, many interfaces can get low latency today. The issue is "how many channels of that can you get". For many, 8 channels is 6 channels more than are used, so it hardly matters. But if you move a lot of audio around, I prefer PCIe by a large margin. This is the native interface of the CPU/Motherboard - not a port on a laptop through an interface chip. It is copper wire direct into the CPU.

Previously I used an RME UFX via USB2. I eventually used all the analog and ADAT ports on it. When it was maxed out, I could only use a specific 6' USB cable or I would get drop outs. The drivers were excellent. Used as an 8ch I/O? I could do anything I wanted and it "just worked" - 15' USB cables? No problem. I would not chose a USB interface at this point, but again, my situation is likely not as common.

I choose a PCIe interface preferentially for one reason: it is the shortest path to the CPU, and also the highest bandwidth. My Dante card sits in one of the x16 slots on my motherboard (yes, I know it is an x4 card and only uses that much bandwidth - but it can use ALL of it, if desired). It doesn't go through the SouthBridge chip. It doesn't share bandwidth with the SATA drives or NVMe drives, it waits for nothing. I know there is plenty of bandwidth there for audio. Contention free, endlessly stable bandwidth. The card is direct to the CPU.

There are thunderbolt/USB3 things that also offer PCI-like bandwidth, but they all have extra hardware layers, cable length limits, etc. Nothing is easier than an Ethernet cable for multi-channel audio distribution. I have my converters racked well across the studio from the DAW with zero issue. But that is more about Ethernet than PCIe... I digress.

I don't use PCIe ADAT cards, and never have, so I can't comment there. But it makes complete sense to me to pass digital audio through a digital interface direct into the CPU, and Dante PCIe is the shortest, most direct path I could find. I've run it for about 18 months now, I think.