Jumping In

[damongold]

so... i'm considering going balls deep and building a 96 input sac rig using the i7 mobo a Q9650 quad core and i need to fit in 3 RME Raydats and the TCO option does anyone have any suggestions?

[Wink0r]

An i7 mobo will need an i7 processor. A Q9650 will not fit in the socket.

[905shmick]

so... i'm considering going balls deep and building a 96 input sac rig using the i7 mobo a Q9650 quad core and i need to fit in 3 RME Raydats and the TCO option does anyone have any suggestions?

FYI - SAC only does 72 inputs and outputs right now. I'm sure it wont be long before it can do 2x that.

[gdougherty]

so... i'm considering going balls deep and building a 96 input sac rig using the i7 mobo a Q9650 quad core and i need to fit in 3 RME Raydats and the TCO option does anyone have any suggestions?

What's your need for 96 inputs? I'd thought about adding preamps for patching larger groups and swapping optical cables if I ever had to do a larger show where we had sound checks for each band before instead of 15 minutes before they start their set.

[RBIngraham]

so... i'm considering going balls deep and building a 96 input sac rig using the i7 mobo a Q9650 quad core and i need to fit in 3 RME Raydats and the TCO option does anyone have any suggestions?

Well you'll have to use at least 2 SAC machines to get that input count as Shmick already pointed out.

If you need that many inputs you might want to consider something a bit nicer than having to deal with 3 Raydat cards. At least I think I would look into the RME MADI gear. Sure the converters are going to cost a heck of a lot more, but I would rather deal with one 75 ohm coax connection than 12 ADAT opticals to get all those channels. If you really can afford all the mics and cables and other gear to fill that many inputs I would expect that the extra cost of the RME MADI gear would be in the budget.

RBI

[Wink0r]

As I understand it the 72 current inputs can be mono or stereo. 96 inputs would be 48 stereo channels. Or 48 mono and 24 stereo, although I don't know were you are going to find all those stereo inputs unless you have a lot of keyboard and synth inputs. I do doubt that even the i7 extreme would be able to keep up with that high of a channel count though.

[RBIngraham]

As I understand it the 72 current inputs can be mono or stereo. 96 inputs would be 48 stereo channels. Or 48 mono and 24 stereo, although I don't know were you are going to find all those stereo inputs unless you have a lot of keyboard and synth inputs. I do doubt that even the i7 extreme would be able to keep up with that high of a channel count though.

Yes it's true that you could have 72 channels that are each a stereo input, however if you look at the audio device set up you'll see that it's limited to 36 stereo input devices and 36 stereo output devices. So you'll never get more than 72 channels of I/O on a single SAC rig. Now if some of that is playback via SAW or software synths or something, then obviously you could run the total input count up above 72 I believe. (never tried it, so don't quote me!) But as you said, you're going to need one hell of a nice computer to do all that in a single box, unless you were very stingy with your resources like EQ, Gates, routing, and how many monitor mixes you were using, etc...

I would still just buy 2 copies of SAC and slit it up with a submixer and main mixer.

RBI

[damongold]

FYI - SAC only does 72 inputs and outputs right now. I'm sure it wont be long before it can do 2x that.

i know that but is easier to buy 3 raydats than mixing and matching 9652's

[damongold]

What's your need for 96 inputs? I'd thought about adding preamps for patching larger groups and swapping optical cables if I ever had to do a larger show where we had sound checks for each band before instead of 15 minutes before they start their set.

the band i am currently mixing is 66 inputs then we ad guests and all sorts of spontaenoius mayhem it has gone to 72. i want to be prepaired for anything and 3 raydats just seems like the easieat solution i can fit the whole rig (except for RF and ears) into a 14 space shockmout rack and away i go. i will be replacing 2 digidesign venues (profile house, d-show monitors) an HD rig plus snakes and splitter for a 14 space rack. that clears out half the trailer behind one bus!!

[RBIngraham]

i know that but is easier to buy 3 raydats than mixing and matching 9652's

2 RayDat cards would give you 64 I/O. Is that not really enough I/O? Keep in mind that since you're effects and such are typically going to be all virtual that you don't need I/O in order to plug those in.

Just thinking that adding a 3rd RayDat card is only going to gain you 8 more inputs and you could probably use the SPDIF on RayDat cards 1 and 2 to get you up to 68 Inputs and Outputs if you really need that many.

Lastly I would double check with RME before you go down that path. I know their drivers allow for 2 RAYDat cards in a single machine, as do most of their cards. But I'm not sure they allow for 3 of them. I would want assurances from RME that their drivers allow that before I dropped the bucks on that. Still, if I really needed that many I/O I think it's just time to step up to some real toys like MADI and not deal with dozens of cheap plastic optical cables to make it all work. But that's just my opinion.

Richard