if I were to buy a mix farm card...

[Fritz]

and say an 888. I’d be able to mix 24 tracks. How much DSP would I have available for plugs etc? Could I get say 12 BombFact comps and 24 4 band EQs and a small Waves package? Or will I run out of gas with just one Farm?

[Philthy]

assuming you already have a mix core card? You need a core card to start.

With a core and an additional farm you could mix 64 tracks. You can get 24 tracks with an LE system (e.g 001).

[Corey Shay]

Actually you can get 64 tracks with just one core card.

[wolfhound]

Remember, 64 tracks requires at least two (probably three) fast scsi drives.

As for plugs, with a core and one farm, you can definitely get that many EQs and a fair amont of Waves plugs. Bomb Factory comps take up a lot of DSP though....

[Fritz]

I’m more thinking about the plugs. 24 tracks is plenty, but is there a ref of how much DSP is required per “xx” plug?

[wolfhound]

Well I'm not sure exactly, but each card has 6 DSP chips on it. I think each instance of say an BF LA-2A takes up one chip (or maybe you get 2 per chip). Plus, by default you've got 2 chips taken by the mix engine, then more taken up by the Stereo Mixer 24 (which needs more and more, depending on how many tracks, sends, auxs, etc.) That's not scientific but that's my experience anyway.

--wolfie

[Redbeard]

"Remember, 64 tracks requires at least two (probably three) fast scsi drives."

Not true. I routinely do large mixes of 64 tracks or more (remember you can do more than 64 tracks if you assign voices properly) off of one 10k rpm SCSI drive. I never split audio between drives and I do a lot of ProTools work.

[snoopy]

The mix engine which handles 32 tracks would take up one chip

The bombfact la-2a or 1176 take up 1/3 a chip each, so for 24 it would take up 8 chips i belive.

24 channels of mcdsp EQ would take up maybe like 2 1/2 chips (rough guess).

Then the mixer would take up part of a chip.

This would take up roughly 13 chips since the different types of uses can't share chips. Each card has 12 chips, so you wouldn't have enough DSP with a Mix+. Perhaps using all waves plugins which can share chips it would be possible.

[snoopy]

Oops, you said 12 compressors, so that would be about 4 Mix chips with the bombfactory ones. Sounds like it is doeable on a Mix+.

[tld]

Keep in mind the option of adding an old DSP farm to the Mix+ later if need be. They can be had pretty cheap these days. I don't usually have a lot of tracks but I use a lot of really DSP hungry plugs, so I wound up adding a DSP farm. While many plugins require mix chips, many do not, and those will wind up on the DSP farm thus freeing up the mix cards.

For me it was a great, ecconomical way to expand my system to more than I needed.

Tom