DAW - based on GA-EP45 incl. hardware list

[peach-os]

I checked the seagate site and i found out that some disks 500gb sata 2 barracuda needs to be flashed with the ad14 firmware.

The old firmware makes them work at 8mb cache....that why it was so slow maybe!

 

yes - that´s right. but read the disclaimer.they won´t replace it if you damage it during the flashing process.

therefore I prefered to send it back

[macke]

hi peach os,

your system is pretty close to what i would like to work with. and it's for the same aim- music production and sometimes video editing.

have you got any- mmh.. midterm experiences concerning stability and once set up- how much time does the system take for maintenance?

would it be a big effort to add pci cards to it (like a uad dsp card) ?

thx for an answer- sorry for beeing so noob in a pro-thread ;-)

[peach-os]

hi peach os,

your system is pretty close to what i would like to work with. and it's for the same aim- music production and sometimes video editing.

have you got any- mmh.. midterm experiences concerning stability and once set up- how much time does the system take for maintenance?

would it be a big effort to add pci cards to it (like a uad dsp card) ?

thx for an answer- sorry for beeing so noob in a pro-thread ;-)

 

the system is absolutely stable.in this guide there is an install for maintenance, what makes life much easier - you need it only for updates,backups or to repair any failures - but as I said before: the system is really stable.

 

you should backup once the system disk as soon it´s up to date. later on you make a new backup after each update.

the disk with your projects should be backuped with timemachine in the background

[macke]

thanks peach-os! sounds like i have a project for for 2009 ;-)

[D00D Hash]

<br />yes - that´s right. but read the disclaimer.they won´t replace it if you damage it during the flashing process.<br />therefore I prefered to send it back <img src="style_emoticons/default/wink_anim.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="wink_anim.gif" /><br />

<br /><br /><br />

 

hahaha they are some greedy bastards anyway the retailer won't get WD disks so I'll tell him to flash teh disk if there is any problem LMAO if he burns it I won't care because I told him that those disks are faulty!

[peach-os]

<br /><br /><br />

 

hahaha they are some greedy bastards anyway the retailer won't get WD disks so I'll tell him to flash teh disk if there is any problem LMAO if he burns it I won't care because I told him that those disks are faulty!

 

you´ve got it

[prodeguerriero]

Hi!

If you have time, it would be a good idea to update the first post with the new solutions you came uo with.

By the way, I had to use chameleon because there was no way to have it work with EFI.

[peach-os]

Hi!

If you have time, it would be a good idea to update the first post with the new solutions you came uo with.

By the way, I had to use chameleon because there was no way to have it work with EFI.

 

this happened ages ago.......................

[starobrno1]

hi peach os,

your system is pretty close to what i would like to work with. and it's for the same aim- music production and sometimes video editing.

have you got any- mmh.. midterm experiences concerning stability and once set up- how much time does the system take for maintenance?

would it be a big effort to add pci cards to it (like a uad dsp card) ?

thx for an answer- sorry for beeing so noob in a pro-thread ;-)

 

I don´t have any UAD cards but I´ve been talking to a guy (also a EP45-DS3 owner) that have and he says they work. Also if I´m not wrong people report down in creativity they do so it´s probably safe.

 

There are good news for the M audio Delta 44 owners and a couple of other PCI soundcards if you check out the Envy24 thread in hardware/Sound. My old 44 works pretty ok and I´ve even managed to combine it with my Phonic firefly 302 FW soundcard, I don´t know the english name for it but maby agregate device? Anyway it lets me use the audio features from bopth of the cards and also the midi from the 302 so now I also have pretty ok recording possibilitys in my second hack too the P35-DS3R, really cool.

[starobrno1]

OSX is just so cool! I decided to test if I could load all my soundcards in the same Logic song and I could. I have the Phonic Firelfly 302 FW soundcard the Safire Pro 10 i/0 FW soundcard and the Maudio Delta 44 PCI soundcard running at the same time in my hack, I can´t believe it. Got somewhere round 14 inputs and 18 outs or something avaliable and I probably can hook up at least two more soundcards since the EP45-DS3 has 3 PCI slots. All of them play if I check switching between their ouputs and this in the same Logic song.

[peach-os]

OSX is just so cool! I decided to test if I could load all my soundcards in the same Logic song and I could. I have the Phonic Firelfly 302 FW soundcard the Safire Pro 10 i/0 FW soundcard and the Maudio Delta 44 PCI soundcard running at the same time in my hack, I can´t believe it. Got somewhere round 14 inputs and 18 outs or something avaliable and I probably can hook up at least two more soundcards since the EP45-DS3 has 3 PCI slots. All of them play if I check switching between their ouputs and this in the same Logic song.

 

you created an aggregate device? cool.........never tried it (no need with 26 IO). please test it a while and tell us about the stability.

I bought a second UAD-1 card last week. ordered a flexi pak pci for 350 euros. with it came a voucher over 500 usd for plugins and an extra 150 usd promo coupon. so I purchased really hot sh** for 650 bucks....... awesome!

 

looking forward to next week - thenI will find time to make some music

[starobrno1]

Yes that´s the English name for it, I set up my OS for my native language so it´s easy to forget these things .

 

I´m not so good at the techincal stuff but it seems the Envy24 is some kind of a standard you find in a bunch of soundcards. It can stream 10 in and 12 out (or was it the other way around hmm ) but the Delta 44 has only 4 in and out so to me it seems it should be possible to hook up another Delta 44 so you at least can use 8 of the in and out streams it´s capable of. I don´t know for sure I´m just guessing here but if it do work it could really be a poor mans choice for sure cause a used Delta 44 can´t be very expensive. And if you need midi too well a used Phonic Firelfly 302 FW card just got to be really cheap too and the 302 also have a pretty ok preamp for homerecording anyway.

 

It seems that it´s working ok in playback but it´s hard to tell what happends in situation with a mix with lots of tracks and more advanced routing, heavy plugins etc. I´m a bit short of mic cables at the time so regarding recording I can´t test with more than two mics (got 4 condencers and two dynamic), my USB garage keyboard, Electric drumset and elctric bas and guitar.

 

I´ve been so much in to this osx86 thing so I´m afraid the musicmaking has been put on hold for way too long so I do´nt really have any suitable "bigger" projects to test on. I have a couple of old songs on the harddrive for my PC Logic though, I´ll check out if they could work to test it out some.

 

Yeah those UAD-1 I hear lots of good things about them, I guess I´ll have to get one too just as soon as this christmasgiftbuyingtimes are over. Where did you order it from?

[manta]

OK I'm up and running, updated to 10.5.5, took a few hours but much less hassle than installing and tweaking windows

 

First of all, thanks again Peach-OS for the guide, couldn't have done it otherwise (well, maybe but it would have taken a lot longer!)

 

A few points:

 

I needed to reboot back into Kalyway after installing Leopard retail because it wouldn't let me delete AppleIntelCpuPowermanagment.kext and AppleEfiRuntime.kext (inadequate permissions).

 

I needed to use a combination of the EFI Tools and terminal methods for fdisk/EFI - I used OSX86 Tools for the fdisk part, because the terminal command for this just didn't work (can't remember the error msg but it couldn't find something)... probably just me being a noob but you might want to check that. OSX86 Tools worked fine for the fdisking.

 

The manual terminal method was the only way I could get EFI working and boot into retail.

 

These are probably insignificant things but they may be helpful for total noobs like me

 

A small point about the hardware list - the OCZ PSU only has 3 SATA power plugs, which I found slightly amazing. Therefore if your drives aren't fairly close together in the case, or if you are going to have more than 2 HDs and a DVD, you will have to get some Molex->SATA adapters. I won't be able to properly assemble my box's drive cages and close the lid until I get some

 

One nice surprise - the official Apple Nvidia 7300GT 256MB card worked absolutely fine - no flashing needed whatsoever. I found this card brand new on ebay for £30 (I don't think Apple sells it in their store anymore)... definitely a good deal for a 7300GT with 2 DVI outs (one of which is dual-link).

 

Will report back with performance details and pics after I've installed the audio interface and got the machine integrated into my studio.

[starobrno1]

Aggregate device seems to work ok. I used two mics one plugged in to the Delta 44 and one mic in to the Phonic firefly 302 where I also plugged in my my digidrumset. I had one el git and one bas git plugged in to the Saffire Pro, my GarageKey plugged in to a USB and all of them routed to the ouputs 1-2 of the Delta 44. For the git, bas and the drums I used Logics own preset channelstrips with it´s amp plugins. I also had a couple of wavtracks loaded. I hit the rec button and it worked ok even with only 2 gig memory and low latency mode activated.

[manta]

Quick update - xbench scores: 232.61 (without disk), 185.28 (with disk).

 

Does this look normal? My specs again:

 

GA-EP45-DS3

Q6600 (not overclocked)

8gb OCZ Gold 800 MHz

Apple/Nvidia 7300GT

2x Western Digital WD5000AAKS

LG DVDR

[peach-os]

Quick update - xbench scores: 232.61 (without disk), 185.28 (with disk).

 

Does this look normal? My specs again:

 

GA-EP45-DS3

Q6600 (not overclocked)

8gb OCZ Gold 800 MHz

Apple/Nvidia 7300GT

2x Western Digital WD5000AAKS

LG DVDR

 

that´s perfect for a machine that´s not overclocked. have a look on my xbench in the sig, to compare it with an overclocked system.

 

Aggregate device seems to work ok. I used two mics one plugged in to the Delta 44 and one mic in to the Phonic firefly 302 where I also plugged in my my digidrumset. I had one el git and one bas git plugged in to the Saffire Pro, my GarageKey plugged in to a USB and all of them routed to the ouputs 1-2 of the Delta 44. For the git, bas and the drums I used Logics own preset channelstrips with it´s amp plugins. I also had a couple of wavtracks loaded. I hit the rec button and it worked ok even with only 2 gig memory and low latency mode activated.

 

 

that´s impressing. imagine doing that with a daw 10 years ago

[starobrno1]

It would´nt have been possible at all so this is really cool, thinking about how little it´ll cost you these days makes it really a dream come true.

 

Oh by the way this test I did on my other hack with the GA P35-DS3R mobo but I´m absolutely sure it´ll work on the EP45 too.

[macke]

hey starobrno1,

 

that would be great news about aggregated audio devices.. since it doesn't seem to work pretty well on real macs-

stacked audio devices seem to lack proper clocking- resulting in phasing probs on multi channel micing setups.

did you try to mic a drumset and recorded it for some minutes? dude, if that works without any clocking/ phasing probs with your set up- i sh*t bricks ;-)

[indraganzo]

Does any one have the problem of not being to able to reach other computers on the network in finder..

When I try to connect to any other computer via LAN (using Finder), It says "Connection Failed" Connect As ... When I try to click Connect As ... nothing happens.

If I ping the IP it returns no problems....

I think there is a fix for this called sharefix.pkg

 

I have installed vanilla 10.5.0 and then using the combo updater I have updated to 10.5.5 ... after replacing the necessary kexts I have run Chamaleon EFI...

I haven't modified my IONetworkingFamily.kext so I wonder if any one has the same problem with the vanilla kexts ( then the problem is the mobo) or is it just me who has made a mistake somewhere?

[manta]

hey starobrno1,

 

that would be great news about aggregated audio devices.. since it doesn't seem to work pretty well on real macs-

stacked audio devices seem to lack proper clocking- resulting in phasing probs on multi channel micing setups.

did you try to mic a drumset and recorded it for some minutes? dude, if that works without any clocking/ phasing probs with your set up- i sh*t bricks ;-)

 

I was going to ask this too - this is an inherent problem with using more than 1 audio card, maybe unless there's some way of syncing the devices' clocks via wordclock etc.

 

Going to install Logic and RME tonight! Pretty excited

 

Does any one have the problem of not being to able to reach other computers on the network in finder..

When I try to connect to any other computer via LAN (using Finder), It says "Connection Failed" Connect As ... When I try to click Connect As ... nothing happens.

If I ping the IP it returns no problems....

I think there is a fix for this called sharefix.pkg

 

Is this with other macs or windows pcs? I should be able to test both of these situations later on today.

[starobrno1]

hey starobrno1,

 

that would be great news about aggregated audio devices.. since it doesn't seem to work pretty well on real macs-

stacked audio devices seem to lack proper clocking- resulting in phasing probs on multi channel micing setups.

did you try to mic a drumset and recorded it for some minutes? dude, if that works without any clocking/ phasing probs with your set up- i sh*t bricks ;-)

 

I´m sorry I haven´t tried with more than two mices and the the other gear I talked about in my previous reply so the only drumset I have is electronic. I let a guy borrow some of my mic cables and well you know what happends then I never got them back ofcourse. I guess I could fix some of mine thats broken and test with 6 mics (I only have 6 mics) recording the same guitar or have a friend come over so we at least could record two guits. That´s aboutwhat I can acomplish at the moment and I doubt just recording a couple of guitars and voxes would do it. The room where I record is far from good regarding acoustics so it would be hard to tell one phasing prob from the other I guess.

 

Could`nt it be those phase probs people would get depends on choosing the wrong unit in the stack to clock the others, or using units not working so good together. Maby they use a couple of the same cards, who knows maby it´s better to use different brands and a mix of fw, pci, usb etc. I don´t know but I can see you would use this aggregate thing more like to set up headphone mixes and stuff. If you need lots of in and outputs you probably already have a card with all you need.

 

Hell if you have a couple on the shelf just try and see what happends. Maby pc hardware is better at this too who knows? I´m just amazed it works at all.

 

Does any one have the problem of not being to able to reach other computers on the network in finder..

When I try to connect to any other computer via LAN (using Finder), It says "Connection Failed" Connect As ... When I try to click Connect As ... nothing happens.

If I ping the IP it returns no problems....

I think there is a fix for this called sharefix.pkg

 

I have installed vanilla 10.5.0 and then using the combo updater I have updated to 10.5.5 ... after replacing the necessary kexts I have run Chamaleon EFI...

I haven't modified my IONetworkingFamily.kext so I wonder if any one has the same problem with the vanilla kexts ( then the problem is the mobo) or is it just me who has made a mistake somewhere?

 

If you can connect to the internet you should be able to connect to another mac or pc. You just have to turn of the firewall and if I´m not wrong also turn on filesharing. Then for a mac you have to know the name and the password for the mac you wanna connect to, sorry I don´t remember the pc way no more but probably something similar.

[manta]

starobrno1 - you should be able to do the test just by playing back - take a long audio file, assign it to 2 different devices' outputs in Logic or whatever and see if they play back in time over a long period.

 

It definitely isn't any better on Windows... it's an inherent problem with clocking.

[starobrno1]

starobrno1 - you should be able to do the test just by playing back - take a long audio file, assign it to 2 different devices' outputs in Logic or whatever and see if they play back in time over a long period.

 

It definitely isn't any better on Windows... it's an inherent problem with clocking.

 

Yeah that might do it I´ll even try with all 3 of them make real copys of the wav for each, I don´t know but it feels this should even be harder for the os to handle (I´ll set the Saffire Pro 10 i/o as clock). I have a small 6 channel Behringer mixer I can use for it. Wonder though if recordings is´nt a bit harder for the os to handle, feels like it should be .

 

I´ll see if I can do it tonight no promises though cause I have a couple of songs I should have recorded live vox guit demos of for way to long now. This tech stuff seems to come in the way all the time but it´s kind of cool to tweak too so

[starobrno1]

I did it but I think I over did it a bit .

 

I loaded the Shiny Toy Guns "The Disko" that shippes with Logic, its a project with lots of tracks probably over 50 (I just don´t have the energy to count them) and a video included too. I made an aggregate device out of my Delta 44 my Phonic Firelfly 302 and my Saffire Pro 10 i/o and routed a bunch of tracks from the project to these guys outputs, maby 10 or so to two of the units outputs and the rest of the tracks I just let stay on output 1-2. It´s been looped playing for two hours now with no synch problems att all and still going strong,I´ll keep it going till I´m done typing this and I´m typing this on my other quadcore hack. I connected the soundcards to my Behringer mixer and plugged in my headphones

 

Sure you might have to create a new aggregate device everytime you boot up. And depending on in what order your os recognizes your soundcards and the unit you decide to let run as clock you every time sure might have to figure how the order of the outs and ins turns out. And yeah it could seem like there´s phase probs but then again these are totally different types of cards and brands an who knows if you can trust the specs they say these cards have. Cause nomatter what card I set the clock to it´s allways the Saffire pro that play loudest and depending on what card gets the clock the Delta 44 might stay quiet or play but the two FW cards allways playes. This could just as well be cause of some pci conflict and /or that these cards outputs "volume" are not the same, but it´s hard to say with a complecated mix like The Disko. Well it´s not that complecated not the stereo version but enough for me to not have the energy to check it out completely.

 

So if you have a bunch of soundcards on the shelf throw em in there laborate try for your self and self see what happends. Besides that I´m pretty sure you allways can use them for headphone mixes and such for your bandmates.

 

This took 20 minutes to type since my frist language is not English and the song is still playing perfectly good.

[manta]

That's cool starobrno1 - looks like a useful function for people who need it.

 

Tried my hack in the studio for the first time tonight, no hassles at all. Logic running great with my RME HDSP 9652 card at 64 samples, successfully installed and tested a UAD2-Duo as well.

 

I'm very happy