3 ms·

Yeah, even the (new? upcoming?) Magma ExpressBox 3T only allows 3 PCI-E cards off your Thunderbolt port; not nearly enough for an audio workstation. Though if

Yeah, even the (new? upcoming?) Magma ExpressBox 3T only allows 3 PCI-E cards off your Thunderbolt port; not nearly enough for an audio workstation. Though if one of those three slots can support a Magma host card, you can then daisy-chain to a regular Magma expansion box.

droithomme 15y ago
I agree, also the problem with a $1000 expander to get 3 PCIe slots is that I know from decades of experience that any time you have some weird standard like this that requires special drivers, very few companies jump in and the prices are necessarily stratospheric. Because of this, the market never develops and support is dropped from the device before the bugs are worked out. Even if you end up with a stable driver, it'll stop working the next time there is an OS upgrade. So you end up running 10.n, while everyone else is on n+1, then n+2, then no more security upgrades, so you have to switch to n+2 and throw away the now useless $1000 box. (Not only this, but reading the ExpressBox materials it seems each PCIe card maker is going to have to write a custom driver that specifically targets the ExpressBox. It seems extremely unlikely to me this is going to happen for even a few of the very few PCIe devices that have Mac support at all anyway.) All could be avoided by either selling normally powered and priced desktops with drive bays and PCIe slots, or at least adding USB3 support. Neither will happen though, Apple has a very long history of backing alternative standards in this way such as NuBus, Firewire and PCI-X.
- jaylevitt 15y ago
  I guess the real answer is treating your computer as a set of audio appliances, and ensuring that your editing appliance can effectively communicate with your DSP appliance. e.g., more stuff like FX Teleport (http://www.fx-max.com/fxt/product.html http://www.fx-max.com/fxt/product.html), RedNet (http://www.focusrite.com/rednet/ http://www.focusrite.com/rednet/), AudioPort (http://www.audioimpressions.com/support/faqs/audioport-universal http://www.audioimpressions.com/support/faqs/audioport-unive...), etc.
kitsune_ 15y ago
Also, if you've already invested 10'000 USD into a solution like UAD (let's say, 2 UAD-2 cards and a ton of overpriced plugins) or bought a ProTools HD card, your next computer will be a PC, and not an iMac if Apple decides to discontinue the Mac Pro.

droithomme 15y ago

I agree, also the problem with a $1000 expander to get 3 PCIe slots is that I know from decades of experience that any time you have some weird standard like this that requires special drivers, very few companies jump in and the prices are necessarily stratospheric. Because of this, the market never develops and support is dropped from the device before the bugs are worked out. Even if you end up with a stable driver, it'll stop working the next time there is an OS upgrade. So you end up running 10.n, while everyone else is on n+1, then n+2, then no more security upgrades, so you have to switch to n+2 and throw away the now useless $1000 box. (Not only this, but reading the ExpressBox materials it seems each PCIe card maker is going to have to write a custom driver that specifically targets the ExpressBox. It seems extremely unlikely to me this is going to happen for even a few of the very few PCIe devices that have Mac support at all anyway.) All could be avoided by either selling normally powered and priced desktops with drive bays and PCIe slots, or at least adding USB3 support. Neither will happen though, Apple has a very long history of backing alternative standards in this way such as NuBus, Firewire and PCI-X.

jaylevitt 15y ago
I guess the real answer is treating your computer as a set of audio appliances, and ensuring that your editing appliance can effectively communicate with your DSP appliance. e.g., more stuff like FX Teleport (http://www.fx-max.com/fxt/product.html http://www.fx-max.com/fxt/product.html), RedNet (http://www.focusrite.com/rednet/ http://www.focusrite.com/rednet/), AudioPort (http://www.audioimpressions.com/support/faqs/audioport-universal http://www.audioimpressions.com/support/faqs/audioport-unive...), etc.

kitsune_ 15y ago

Also, if you've already invested 10'000 USD into a solution like UAD (let's say, 2 UAD-2 cards and a ton of overpriced plugins) or bought a ProTools HD card, your next computer will be a PC, and not an iMac if Apple decides to discontinue the Mac Pro.