Magma CB2/Intel Laptop

[Snitz]

Is there any Intel Laptop that will run the Magma CB2 with two HD cards installed? I know the new Macbook Pro will not.

thanks.

[Jeff D.]

I just e-mailed Magma asking the same thing! I have an older CB2S chassis, and I'll get the Expresscard 34 adapter if it will work with my PCI HD cards and Macbook Pro.

I'll post when they reply...

Jeff D.

[Jeff D.]

Here is the reply I received from Magma:

You can not use your older CB2S with MacBook pro even if you use the new ExpressCard 34.
You have to get a new 2slot chassis.

Bummer!

Jeff D.

[CPettigrew]

I hear ya. I have the older 1-slot, 2-slot, and 4-slot, and all are no good with the MacBook Pro and Express Card/34. I'd swap all 3 for one newer 2-slot.

Craig

[Snitz]

One question on this. Is the current CB2 compatible with the Macbook Pro and Express card, or are we all waiting for something new?

I hear ya. I have the older 1-slot, 2-slot, and 4-slot, and all are no good with the MacBook Pro and Express Card/34. I'd swap all 3 for one newer 2-slot.

Craig

[Mauro371]

Hello all,

I just went through this myself and would like to share my experience in hopes it helps others.

I had bought an older Magma 1 slot chassis that worked fine with my PowerBook G4, 10.4.11, and PT 7.3. When I bought my Intel Laptop, a MacBook Pro 2.6Ghz, 4Gb RAM, the 1 slot would not work, as some of you already stated. Upon many conversations with Magma, which were very helpful throughout, I ended up buying the PCB board from the new 1 slot and installing it in the old chassis. It turns out that the new board has a different chip (the Pericom chip) which works fine with the Intel laptops. You would also have to change the cable and of course buy the Express34 card instead of the CardBus card. That did the trick for me, and it was cheaper than buying a new 1 slot or 2 slot to exchange the old one.

I also bought a new 2 slot from Magma, that already comes with the Pericom chip. PT runs perfectly fine with both the 1 slot with the new Pericom board and with the 2 slot. The only oddity is that before starting with the Express34 card in, I have to uncheck all the menu items in System Preferences that show on the finder (such as the clock, Airport strength, battery charge indicator, etc.). Then shut down and then restart with the card in. If I don't, I am not able to run PT reliably, will not be able to unmount/mount external hard drives, etc. In other words, I can only run PT 7.4.2 with 10.5.3 reliably if I have no menu items, which is no biggie in my case.

The other problem I have encountered is that while performance is on par or better of what I was getting when running PT on the PowerBook with the old chassis, cable, and card, this is only true for lower sampling rates. As soon as I am at or above 88.2kHz, performance suffers. For example, I was able to record without a glitch 8 channels of 192kHz/24 bit with the PowerBook G4 1Ghz with the old chassis. (This was with PT 7.3 and 10.4.11). With the new 1 slot or 2 slot and the MacBook Pro, I can open that same session, but after a couple of seconds of playback, I get the dreaded message that there is not enough CPU and it stops. Furthermore, upon inspecting the System CPU usage in ProTools and more importantly the PCI bus usage, it is maxed out. This is strange, since it hardly peaks to the half point with the older PowerBook G4 1Ghz running 10.4.11.

I am not sure what the problem is here, since it would appear that having a faster computer (Intel 2.6Ghz vs PPC 1Ghz), faster buses, faster PCI protocols, newer PT, newer OS, etc. should translate in better performance but it is not the case. It could be the drivers, it could be the OS. It is not the chassis, since just swapping the ExpressCard34 for the CardBus and running the same PT cards, same chassis, same cables with my old PowerBook brings better performance at higher sampling rates.

I am hoping that Magma, Digidesign, or Apple addresses this soon.

[Snitz]

Mauro371, thank you for the very informative and detailed post. Most striking, if I'm reading correctly, is that even at nominal samping rates you get performance that is not significantly better than a Powerbook/CB2 combo circa 2004. And, your performance at doubled rates is worse than the old gear(!).

Anyway, awesome post, please let us know any developments, thanks!......

AS, NYC

[scottgreiner]

Hey Mauro371 - A couple of questions for you...

-Is your system an Accel system?
-Are you able to select anything other than the 48 voice/1DSP playback engine?

I too have the weird "menu items disappearing" thing but was unaware it was affecting reliability. I have an HD2 Accel in a 4slot Magma (pericom), running PT 7.4cs5 under OS 10.5.1. The MBP is a 2.2GHz, and I can't change my playback engine without massive errors and total PT corruption involving a re-install...

[Mauro371]

Hi scottgreiner. My system is an HD2, not Accel. If I can recall, I believe I was having similar problems with PT 7.4 until I moved to 7.4.2pr and now to 7.4.2. I am able to change playback engine settings without a problem. In fact, so far, I have not run into any problems with ProTools (other than poor performance at high rates). Then again, I haven't tested it with video at all, since the setup is mostly for location recording and basic editing/mixing with recording track counts of up to 24, maybe more on occasion.

The only issue I still have, and this may have little to do with the chassis and setup and more with ProTools, is that RTAS performance is very bad. But then again, it has always been that way for me in ProTools, even when I was running it back in my old trusty PowerMac G4. However, it seems that as time goes by, the performance hit of RTAS is ever so much more obvious. For example, I was able to instantiate and run a session with 70 (seventy, not seven!!!) Izotope Ozone AU plug ins in Logic 8.2 (not that I would necessarily do that in a real session, but I wanted to test it) and with that load I was able to peg one of the two cores in my MacBook Pro with plenty of DSP power to spare having the whole other core free. In ProTools, loading up one RTAS version of the Ozone plug in works fine but after a couple more (that's 2 or 3 instead of 70+!!) I get choppy audio, cracks and pops, and finally the dreaded pop up window informing me I don't have enough CPU, which of course, I have plenty of. I really hope Digidesign addresses this quickly.

[scottgreiner]

Hi Mauro371,

So let me get this straight: you have a MBP 2.6, OS 10.5.3 with the menu stuff removed, Magma 2 slot chassis, 2 non-Accel cards, Protools 7.4.2, and you can change the playback engine freely?

I have a MBP 2.2, OS 10.5.1 without the menu stuff removed, Magma 4 slot chassis, 2 Accel cards, Protools 7.4cs5 and I can not. As soon as I'm out from under a few deadlines I'll try your exact setup (except the 2 slot of course) on another drive and see what that brings.

Let us know if the memory allocation bug crops up, as several folks following this thread had stable systems for a time, and then were inflicted with the problem later.

Shame about RTAS...