• Registered: 2017-10-02
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Topic: Multiple HDSPe under Mac/Cubase?

Hi there

I have an AIO but recently running out of IO pretty quickly due to many speakers and outboard gears. But I don’t really want to change the card completely as a lot of projects are mapped to my current IO settings.

So my questions are:

1, Can I add a second AIO and use all of the IO’s on both cards simultaneously? An RME dealer told me it’s only possible in Windows using ASIO (so is written in AIO’s manual). Is it possible for Mac OS? Seems Mac will pick out each card and use as single device unless using aggregate function. But seems the aggregate function might not be a good idea?

2, if question 1 is possible, can the second card not be an AIO but a different HDSPe card like the RayDat? Manual said all HDSPe card use same driver.

I did read the manual carefully but it was quite brief on these questions and emphasized more on the clock syncing.

Thanks a lot!

  • ramses
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Re: Multiple HDSPe under Mac/Cubase?

to 1- I can't tell for Mac sry

to 2- if cards use the same driver then the DAW can access them all. You only need to clock sync both cards and make sure that all cards use always the same ASIO buffersize.
But you have then 2 separate TM FX instances per card and are not able to route between those TM instances, routing happends only inside of a TM FX instance / card.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14
  • Registered: 2017-10-02
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Re: Multiple HDSPe under Mac/Cubase?

ramses wrote:

to 1- I can't tell for Mac sry

to 2- if cards use the same driver then the DAW can access them all. You only need to clock sync both cards and make sure that all cards use always the same ASIO buffersize.
But you have then 2 separate TM FX instances per card and are not able to route between those TM instances, routing happends only inside of a TM FX instance / card.

Thank you!

As for routine as long as the DAW can access them all, I can route them inside the DAW. But I heard that Mac version Cubase recognize audio device by serial number rather than driver. Don’t know if anyone had successfully using 2 HDSPe in Mac.

4 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
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Re: Multiple HDSPe under Mac/Cubase?

Aggregate works and is the only way.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • Registered: 2017-10-02
  • Posts: 17

Re: Multiple HDSPe under Mac/Cubase?

MC wrote:

Aggregate works and is the only way.

Thank you MC.

Follow up question 3:
Have you tested multiple HDSPe using Aggregate? Does it take a toll on latency and stability? Are there any other trade-offs?

Question 4: this is a more general question. Does the AIO perform better in Win or Mac? I mean I will switch to windows.

  • ramses
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Re: Multiple HDSPe under Mac/Cubase?

Windows has a very good performance as DAW.
See also http://www.dawbench.com/

With Windows you have the additional advantage to be able to use DIGIChecks Global Record, a very reliable lightweight recording solution, which is not available for Mac platform.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14

7 Reply by MC

  • MC
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Re: Multiple HDSPe under Mac/Cubase?

Of course we tested multiple HDSPes, up to three. The bottleneck is your computer - does it have available PCIe slots? How many resources are available to use 2 or 3 cards in it? One common solution these days are external PCIe chassis connected by Thunderbolt (Sonnet, Netstore).

One can not generalize the Mac versus Windows performance as it is always hardware dependent. The differences are small if everything works as it should. Features and user experience on both platforms are a different thing.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website