• Registered: 2008-10-08
  • Posts: 20

Topic: 3X AES32 PCI + Cubase = Feeze

Hello all,
Long story short, I'm experiencing stability issues when trying to run 3 AES32 cards in my systems. I previously had 2 PCI and 1 PCIe cards functioning in this system years ago, but have had to switch to 3 pci cards for configuration reasons.
- All 3 cards are flashed to 234
- win 8.1 64bit
- cubase 7.5 64bit

Just for comparison reasons, I've tried this on 3 other systems (with fresh os installs) without luck. I have also tried running 1 and 2 cards at a time WITH success. Each card functions separately, as well as any combination of any 2 cards.

Cubase will freeze when all inputs and outputs are activated in the VST connection window. If I only activate 32 i/o, it runs fine.

Any details on how I can troubleshoot this issue?
thanks!
Dan

2 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
  • Administrator
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  • From: Germany/Thailand
  • Registered: 2007-04-06
  • Posts: 25,565

Re: 3X AES32 PCI + Cubase = Feeze

Your driver version?

Second step would be to check that all three cards are fully controlled from the Settings dialog and from TotalMix FX, means you can change settings and routing/mixing sucessfully on any card.

Then apply one WDM device to every card and try to use it by assigning it as speaker and using Media player - 3 times.

Then try to look at incoming levels via DIGICheck, either with a 4 bar or better global level meter, on any card. With hardware access, then ASIO.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • From: Houston, TX
  • Registered: 2007-05-11
  • Posts: 1,191

Re: 3X AES32 PCI + Cubase = Feeze

Just curious (maybe relevant?) - Does your MoBo implement "Native PCI" or "Bridged PCI" (PCIe > PCI Bridge Chip)?

cool

MADIface-XT+ARC / 3x HDSP MADI / ADI648
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  • Registered: 2008-01-01
  • Posts: 3,025

Re: 3X AES32 PCI + Cubase = Feeze

If it's bridged then likely all three PCI slots are connected to the same single bridge chip, which in turn is connected to a single PCI-E lane (hopefully without sharing that lane furthermore with other PCI-E devices).

The name of the mainboard might help to find out which solution is used.

  • Registered: 2008-10-08
  • Posts: 20

Re: 3X AES32 PCI + Cubase = Feeze

Hey Guys,
thanks for all of the helpful replies.
I seem to have found a work around for this issue, but I think something deeper still exists.
So I tried putting 3 PCI cards in 3 separate computer setups without any success. I ended up getting a PCI-E to PCI adaptor so I could plug one of the cards into a spare PCIe port on the motherboard. That solution works well. The computer has been working pretty stable for about a day now.
The deeper issue that I would like to investigate is that these computers don't have any limitations using all 3 PCI slots at once. 2 of them had 3 Lynx AES16 cards installed and worked fine (other than their crappy drivers, which is why I moved to RME).  There's nothing wrong with these ports, PCI bus, or ability to utilize all of them together.
So what is up with the RME cards that makes it impossible to use in this configuration?

  • Registered: 2008-01-01
  • Posts: 3,025

Re: 3X AES32 PCI + Cubase = Feeze

Did you try to lower the number of WDM devices in the RME driver yet? These get initialized (all of them!) every time Cubase starts.

  • Registered: 2008-10-08
  • Posts: 20

Re: 3X AES32 PCI + Cubase = Feeze

Thanks again! I disabled all WDM drivers for the 3 cards and now everything is working in harmony smile

  • Registered: 2008-10-08
  • Posts: 20

Re: 3X AES32 PCI + Cubase = Feeze

well...maybe I spoke too soon.
By disabling those wdm settings, I'm able to get much farther than before. But I'll still get crashes when all input/output are enabled in Cubase. I took out one of the cards and let a song loop all night. Everything is stable with 2 cards  sad
Going to try a PCI expansion chassis next.