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Volume 4, Number 9, December 2006
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Support Report: Using Expansion Chassis with UAD
By James Ciglar

Ahh, it's good to be back in the saddle again for another Support Report. This time we are taking a look at Expansion chassis with both PCIe (aka PCI-Express) and PCI/PCI-X and their performance in relation to the UAD-1 as well as the UAD-1 card with Pro Tools HD2 and HD3 PCI systems (PCIe HD cards not yet tested). We selected a few of the more popular expansion chassis currently on the market and tested them with two different Mac setups.† PC setups should perform exactly the same, barring any chipset incompatibilities with the expansion chassis system itself.

Manufacturer
Magma /
Moibility
Electronics
Magma /
Moibility
Electronics
SBS Technologies
Cyclone Microsystems
Cyclone Microsystems
One Stop Systems
Type
PCIe to
PCI-X
PCIe to
PCI
PCIe to
PCI-X
PCIe to
PCIe
PCIe to
PCIe
PCIe to
PCIe
Product
PE6R4
PCI4DRQ
(w/ PCIe host card)
PCIE-PCIX-7S
600-2701
600-2705
OSS-SYS-EXP-20
# Slots
6 PCI-X
4 PCI
7 PCI-X
8 PCIe
7 PCIe
20 PCIe
Performance w/UAD
Poor
Good
Great
Excellent
Excellent
Excellent
Recommended
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Supported No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Footnotes
*
**
 
Link product page

We plan on testing more models in the future, when additional time and resources are available.

Footnotes
* We are working with Magma directly on resolving the performance issues with the PE6R4 model chassis; however, it remains unresolved at this time.

** The SBS chassis is our current recommended chassis for use with Pro Tools TDM/HD systems and the UAD-1 card. For the best performance, we recommend separating the UAD-1 cards and the TDM/HD cards (or any other PCI cards for that matter) on the two internal busses of the SBS chassis. Slots 1-4 are on one bus, and slots 5-7 are on the other bus. Slot 1 is located on the left side of the chassis, farthest from the power supply.

†Test systems

Dual Core 2GHz G5 (PCIe)

  • 1GB RAM
  • Built-in Audio and Fireface 800 audio interfaces
  • Digidesign HD3 w/ 96 audio interface

Quad Core 2Ghz Mac Pro (PCIe)

  • 1GB RAM
  • Built-in Audio & Fireface 800 audio interfaces
  • Digidesign HD3 w/ 96 audio interface

Questions or comments on this article?
updated 12-13-06