Magma 4 Slot 8 Core MacPro

[studiom]

So finally bit the bullet and got a 4 slot Magma and a 08 Mac Pro 8 Core 2.8. Soooooo much better than my poor old Dual G5. Runs great so far. Have only tried it up to 96 voices, but I don't often go above that anyhow. It's quite remarkable the leap in power from my old mac.... should have done it sooner! Fingers crossed all stays okay.

M.

[scottgreiner]

are you PCI or PCIe?

[studiom]

Originally Posted by scottgreiner

are you PCI or PCIe?

My HD cards are PCI-X. So I'm going PCIe to PCI-X.

[scotsman]

Look forward to hearing your story as I too need to upgrade (running PT7.4 with a G4 867Mhz, works well on audio but struggles with VI, as you might expect).

I can't decide if to take the card upgrade to PCIe or a Magma expansion, and I like the sound (& price) of the 4 card Magma.

regards
Scotsman

[studiom]

So far so good... Running BFD, Mini Grand, Structure Free, plus a heap of audio at the moment. I have 4 Cards so my only feasible(affordable) option was a Chassis.

[bashville]

Originally Posted by studiom

My HD cards are PCI-X. So I'm going PCIe to PCI-X.

I have this same setup with a 4-slot Pericom chassis. PCI-x Core, 2 Accels, and an original process in the chassis. Harpertown single-processor quad-core. No issues beyond normal getting the bugs out of a new setup. I run into trouble sometimes working on more than a couple songs in a row without rebooting or restarting.

But nothing I didn't experience in any other PT setup I've had. I'm running Logic simultaneously on the same machine for VI's (piping audio in via ADAT), so I've had limited experience with RTAS so far, although I've had to run some 96k sessions recently that had BFD1 instantiated into multiple outs. Those ran great--maybe better than in Logic.

[Spaced]

Another 'me too' for the 4 slot Pericom and Dual 2.8GHz Harpertown with HD4 Accel.

Had it for about a month now, l upgraded from a Dual 2.5GHz G5 as well. Just bought a PCIe host card from Magma and carried on- no problems so far. I run 96 voices (haven't needed more so far, so can't comment)

The Chassis houses a fixed 500GB disc for sound library and a removable (WeibeTech RTX100-INT: http://www.wiebetech.com/products/RTX100.php) for sessions. The removable is not hot swap-able, but still v.handy.

The drives are interfaced using 2 of the now unfortunately discontinued WeibeTech SATA dock (http://www.wiebetech.com/products/satadock.php) These were cool because they can be powered directly from the Magma's PSU- no power adaptor.

The chassis also works fine with my 1GHz PowerBook G4 via a PCMCIA card- although obviously I don't get any RTAS/EA performance. Straight recording/TDM works great though- same voice count.

[PeterB]

Originally Posted by studiom

So finally bit the bullet and got a 4 slot Magma and a 08 Mac Pro 8 Core 2.8. Soooooo much better than my poor old Dual G5. Runs great so far.
M.

I'm looking at a chassis in my future, so keep us posted on how it performs.
How's the latency? is it as good as the PE6R4


Peter

[Mark Dann]

I am running the 2-slot chassis with HD2, on the new 8-core Mac Pro 2.26. No problems, everything seems good. I have HD3, but no longer see the needs to go beyond 2 cards, as the Mac Pro totally slays the third Accel card. All three of them, actually! Selling my third card will pay for the chassis.

The Magma people told me that the 2-slot chassis is 64-bit, whereas the 4-slot is 32-bit. This supposedly would manifest itself as "slower", possibly meaning more latency. I don't have both to compare, so I have no comment. I will say that there is maybe the tiniest bit of latency with the 2-slot, or at least I thought there was. I can't hear it any more if it's there. Yesterday I did a session with a singer who I have been working with for the past ten years, and he didn't hear it

[Sutee Sangsareechon]

Me too, I use Magma 2 Slots on my 2008 8cores
it's working fine for my HD2, Plugin almost use a ton of RTAS.
TDM for Mixer and some Reverb or Dlay TDM plug
Latency is acceptable.

I'm very impress with it, but waiting for PT8 bugs fix.
many uncompatible GUI with some Plugs.