Cliff Can You Tell Us The Status Of The 3X3 USB RE-AMP!!

willowdale

willowdale

Fractal Fanatic
I really want this feature, so an update on your thoughts on this would be appreciated.

You last stated that 3X3 was the answer but you were having an issue with doing this on a PC, and have not said anything since.

Am I to assume that this means you could do it on a MAC?

Any info from you(or anyone from Fractal) on the progress would be cool.

Can you tell I really want this feature!!
 
I believe in a thread he said that it used up too much CPU for that configuration. Lemme find the thread as to make sure.
 
I believe he said it used up too much CPU for 4X4, but that 3X3 was the answer. He then went on to complain about something to do with PC Code.
 
4x4 overloads the USB 2.0 bandwidth.... We have 4x2 already, so 3x3 is probably a reconfig, but might be a coding challenge ?
 
As a USB programmer, I can tell you the PC drivers for USB suck big time! Cliff is probably battling the crap code from Microsoft.
 
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What do you need 3x3 or 4x4 for? Currently I can record the wet and dry tracks simultaniously in stereo. I don't know for what I should need/use more tracks?
 
mDaniel said:
What do you need 3x3 or 4x4 for? Currently I can record the wet and dry tracks simultaniously in stereo. I don't know for what I should need/use more tracks?
Click to expand...
I think the issue here is you can't currently reamp and listen to the mix at the same time
 
s0c9 said:
4x4 overloads the USB 2.0 bandwidth.... We have 4x2 already, so 3x3 is probably a reconfig, but might be a coding challenge ?
Click to expand...

haha usb 2.0 can handle much more than crappy 6 or 8 tracks at one time ;)

just do a simple calculation: one track on 48khz witz 24bit -> 48000 * 24bit = 140kBytes/s = 0,137 MB/s

on 8 tracks thats only about 1 MB/s ... usb2.0 can handle much more even with some information for the transfer protocol etc. (run and external HD and it will copy data with about 30MB/s)

if cliff finds the time to update the drivers would be awesome :) most of my presets wont scratch the 80% cpu mark so no problem for me ;)

and remember its digital so nearly no signal degradation at all -> you can split your preset if you need to (e.g. run only amp and cab -> reamp your wet amp&cab track with added effects)
 
I don't think it's quite as simple as that....

for example, MIDI is only 64kb/s
USB is therefore [in theory] many thousands of times faster and therefore easily fast enough.
The reality is a little different. MIDI, despite running at a lowly 64k does not run particularly well over USB and actually runs better over the old 5 pin DIN cable.

The delays incurred are due to the encapsulation and de-encapsulation overheads of the MIDI information [which is now a payload of other protocols].
Therefore... having a great big truck don't mean you can load and unload it quickly enough....

I suspect that similar things happen with respect to the audio over USB.
There will come a point where the processing effort required to break up, pack up and stuff the audio streams into the USB, and then retrieve, unpack and reassemble the audio streams at the other end is simply not enough to do the job well enough.
Handling real time media streams like audio requires lots of computing and networking effort.
Fast wire speeds are important, but this is only part of the solution.

Not being an expert in this area, I have been told by folks [that seem to me to be very knowledgeable] that USB, depite it's speed is actually quite inefficient. Which in the end gives it a much slower effective speed.
And so I was advised to avoid USB audio interfaces and only use firewire.
 
^ LOL!!

@clarky - totally right. And FireWire has much more sustained throughput, making it superior for this type of thing, even though USB 2.0 is 'faster'.

USB 3.0 is supposed to be able to compete with FireWire in this aspect, but it hasn't really caught on yet - I suspect because most users do not need this kind of speed and throughput.

I can see the axe II ultra/III coming with USB 3.0 if it is seen to be a bottleneck of types tho.
 
yeah your right its not only the speed thing ;) but 8 tracks are nothing for usb ^^ there are plenty of audio interfaces out there that can handle easy twice the track count ;) e.g. some cheap alesis multimix 16usb can handle 16 tracks in with ease !
 
That's true, but not at 24 bit 48khz. Also, they are just doing ad/da conversion. The axe is also doing a TON of processing. I can imagine for it to do all that processing as well as have to handle a bunch of stereo audio tracks must be quite taxing on the CPU.
I'm sure cliff will figure something out tho - he always seems to :D
 
a friend of mine owns some of these alesis things and they can handle 16 ins (or 18 im not quite sure) and 2 outs all at the same time at 24bits and 48khz.

and if you look at what the extra inputs would be: a second pair of audio directly from the daw and some stereo out for the direct signal of the axe there is only an signal addition at the end of the chain

or what else further processing is there i might have overlooked
 
I have to agree: USB 2.0 has enough bandwidth to handle way more than 16 tracks of 24-bit audio sampled at 48 KHz or even 96 KHz.

I have to disagree: USB 2.0 and "High-Speed" USB are identical. USB 1.0 was called "low-speed." USB 1.1 was called "full-speed." USB 2.0 is called "high-speed."

MIDI runs faster over USB 2.0 than it does over a standard MIDI cable. If you have an Axe-FX II, you can test this yourself. Connect to AxeEdit over USB 2.0, and transfer a bank from the Axe. Then disconnect the USB cable, connect using MIDI cables, and see how much longer that bank transfer takes.
 
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