59 Tracks, Cubase at 16/44.1Khz

[kelldammit]

using a lacie usb2 external 7200 drive as "tape reel"...
i just recorded 16 mono audio tracks in one pass (simultaneously) out of battery2 (i.e. each drum bussed separately in dp), at 48/24.
processor usage (dp's meter) @ +/- 25%.
so far the track count is something like...2-3 stereo tracks, 22 or so mono, all at 48k/24bit.
also, i have the following busses running:
aux 1: mweq, shelving off anything below 3khz..each cymbal output is routed directly to this bus, then an aux send from this bus goes to aux 2.
aux 2: masterverb5, drum reverb.
aux 3: delay 1: for two arpegiated synth parts
aux 4: delay 2: delay for yet another part...
aux 5: masterverb 5, big pad reverb.

all auxes are stereo. it's starting to get a little sluggish at this point (it's the verbs), but i can still add a couple more things...once i bounce the verbs, though...utilization goes back to just above 0.
the recording was done @ 256k/2 buffers, currently it's set to 1024k.


see my system spec. you should see MUCH better counts than this...
oh, and incidentally, on cubase vst/24 with a pIII 550 processor, i hit somwhere around 36 tracks...mostly mono, again at 48k/24...it didn't have problems with the audio, it was the fx that finally drove it into the dirt.

kell

[fmcfeete7]

...Let me also add that for me, 33 tracks is a huge mix and I can't see ever needing more tracks than that. But maybe that's just me. I remember when 16 tracks was a huge mix....Jeff

I'm sorry, but that is so unrealistic these days. Not trying to start a fight here, but I *regularly* deal with 100+ tracks in Pro Tools HD. If you are doing a complete production in-the-box, with full orchestra, layers of vocals, synth tracks, live rhythm section, etc., then you will easily top 100 tracks. The biggest session I've ever done in Pro Tools was 176 tracks.

You guys should check out Mitch Gallagher's white paper at Sweetwater. http://www.sweetwater.com/feature/motu/
He tests exactly the things we're talking about here.

Thanks SOOOO MUCH for all of your feedback. I am going to take all of these responses into account however, I am at the point where mixing 100 tracks is still out of the realm of my understanding. Right now my clientele on require 16 max. However, it's nice to know that DAWs are robust enough to handle that much. I will begin making my modifications today and report back to the forum my progress. Great posts all!!! Thanks again. I got just the advice I needed.

[Astia]

Just finished mixing a song with total of 114 mono tracks, 8 auxes and 2 Mach5‘s. All audio was from an external FW disk. The mix was done OTB with a few dozen plugins in DP. The G5 was nearly on its knees but I got the song finished without problems.
Only strange thing was that Mach5‘s(and some other plugins) would lose their ADC after exporting the mixed file as both 24 and 16bit AIF. I could continue either restarting DP or by opening Hardware conf and clicking ok.

[ghia]

Hey,
I'm waiting for the delivery of a new PowerMacG5 Dual 2.3Ghz. /3.5 g rAM It comes stock with one sata 250GB Drive.
Looks like adding a 2nd drive is the way to go....
What brand is best to use with PowerMacs? Are all SATA Internal Hard Drives compatible? I'm brand new to Mac!!

Looks like an External FW drive would be good for back-up as well...

Any suggestions or links!!

Thanks,
G

[grimepoch]

Thanks Rick, I will try those fixes and see what happens. What is an Xbench? What is an Aggregate? What is a LucidGen96?

* Xbench is an application for benchmarking the performance of difference aspects of your system. Like, graphics, hard drive transfer rates, floating point. For instance, if you leave lots of plugins open, like someone mentioned, the Masterworks EQ with FFT going, you are going to seriously limit the performance of your machine. FFT transforms take some power. I use this when making changes to my system to see if I get improvements. Where this doesn't help is when I have bus contention problems, like two firewire devices trying to use the same bus and limiting each other.

* Aggregate audio is a setting in AudioMidi for CoreAudio in OSX that allows you to create a new device that is actually just a combination of your multiple devices. In DP, it shows up as one device. When I use this, I get less problems with audio timing.

*Lucid Genx96 is a word clock generator. I use it clock both my two 896s and an Analog to ADAT device I use to get 8 more analog channels.

[Kubi]

Just to clarify: IMO everyone should have at least two internal HDs in their G5s. One for OS and Apps, the other for audio. Internal drive are on the SATA buss, which is the fastest buss in the G5 by a good margin.

I then chose to have my audio interface on my PCI buss, not on the FW buss, since there is data bandwidth on the PCI buss that otherwise would go unused.

Finally, if you do use FW for your audio HD, use the FW800. It is much faster than FW400, obviously.

AFAIK, both FW800 and FW400 are still on one single FW buss in the machine, so if you have everything connected via FW, you'll still get les performance than if you divide up the tasks among all internal data busses available.

[ghia]

Thanks Kubi!
Do you have any idea what SATA Hard Drives are a good fit with PowerMacs? I see many different choices, and I am a brand new to a DAW setup, and have no experience with Macs at All!!

Sweetwater has a few choices but they are $300+. Seems like I could do better finding one thru a different vendor...
Any help is appreciated!!
Thanks,
G

[MT Groove]

I was pleasantly surprised yesterday when I imported some files into DP. I was almost certain that it would have tripped but it played back fine. It was 69 mono tracks at 24 Bit 88.2kHz. These files were consolidated from a Pro Tools session so it was actually playing them all at once. All I got is an internal ATA133 Western Digital 7200 RPM drive (separate audio and system drives). This is on a G4 Dual 1.25 with OS 10.3.9, DP 4.61, MOTU 896HD, 1 Gig RAM, 512 buffer.