Using Mac tower as a slave

crunchitall · Post by **crunchitall** » Mon Nov 17, 2014 8:57 am

Hey all,
Got a somewhat strange problem I'm trying to solve.

I need to connect a thunderbolt UAD satellite to a computer with a thunderbolt port, while using the i/o from a computer without a thunderbolt port.

The studio I need to work at has its i/o hooked up with a mac tower that is older than thunderbolt, and what I am hoping to do is use a mac mini with thunderbolt to run pro tools and use the tower as a slave i/o hub. This way I can get all the studio's rack gear and console and also use all the my plugs.

I know how to use the tower's hard disk as a slave by connecting it to the mini with firewire but does anyone know how to get the tower's i/o to show up on a Pro Tools session opened with the mac mini?

Thanks in advance!

kslight · Post by **kslight** » Mon Nov 17, 2014 9:55 am

The simple solution might be just to get a thunderbolt to FireWire adapter, if the UAD will be able to use that. A quick google search implied that this should work.

The only way I am aware of that your solution would work would be if you ran the digital outs of the tower to a separate soundcard on your mini...which kind of seems like the long way around.

crunchitall · Post by **crunchitall** » Mon Nov 17, 2014 10:54 am

The firewire to thunderbolt is problematic because of firewire's bandwidth limitations so the long way around seems like my only option...

JWL · Post by **JWL** » Mon Nov 17, 2014 11:46 am

I know little about Macs and even less about Thunderbolt, but I would think you could get a thunderbolt card for the mac and hook it directly?

kslight · Post by **kslight** » Mon Nov 17, 2014 1:04 pm

JWL wrote:I know little about Macs and even less about Thunderbolt, but I would think you could get a thunderbolt card for the mac and hook it directly?

To my knowledge you can't get thunderbolt cards, it's something that has to be on the motherboard.

kslight · Post by **kslight** » Mon Nov 17, 2014 1:11 pm

crunchitall wrote:The firewire to thunderbolt is problematic because of firewire's bandwidth limitations so the long way around seems like my only option...

Have you tried it to verify it doesn't perform? I would be very surprised if the thunderbolt version was any different from the FireWire version of the satellite internally. And like I said, a quick search online suggested that the UAD should work. Seems like it would be worth trying to me, versus the long way around..

crunchitall · Post by **crunchitall** » Mon Nov 17, 2014 2:10 pm

kslight wrote:
crunchitall wrote:The firewire to thunderbolt is problematic because of firewire's bandwidth limitations so the long way around seems like my only option...
Have you tried it to verify it doesn't perform? I would be very surprised if the thunderbolt version was any different from the FireWire version of the satellite internally. And like I said, a quick search online suggested that the UAD should work. Seems like it would be worth trying to me, versus the long way around..

Ya I did check. The problem is that the bandwidth of firewire is significantly smaller than the amount of data the eight cores needs, so I would run out of firewire bandwidth long before I maxed out the UAD.

alexdingley · Post by **alexdingley** » Tue Nov 18, 2014 4:43 pm

So... what's the Audio I/O on the mac Tower?

I'm 99.9% sure that you can't do what you're attempting. Thunderbolt Ports on a computer CAN host a FW device, but ... the reverse shouldn't be true. Thunderbolt Devices can't dangle off of a FW port... so the "get an adapter" solution, shouldn't work.

Is there no way to connect the Tower's Audio I/O system to the Mac Mini? Is it FW or USB? If that's the case, you'd be able to just move it over to the other mac...

You're not going to be able to have ALL THE CAKE and eat it too... in this scenario. Networking two macs, or Target-Disking on to the other, won't allow one computer to fully take advantage of all of the bus & port options on the other computer. If that were the case... man, it would be amazing.

You may have to just run two sessions. Do whatever work you need to on the Mini+UAD system... Print those tracks to new tracks (with effects printed)... Then bump that session over to the Mac Tower & push all the audio out of the cool I/O that lives there.

One interesting thought... on this topic. Logic Pro allows a cool "processor sharing" feature. Thats one of the reasons that I use Logic. If you have a session on one machine, you can allocate any track's processing to another networked Mac (Needs to run over gigabit cable - not over wi-fi) and just run the "logic Node" tool on other macs... It basically turns other computers into Native-only Processing Satellites. It's kinda great when you need to do shit-tons of processing.

but I digress.

Nick Sevilla · Post by **Nick Sevilla** » Tue Nov 18, 2014 9:37 pm

crunchitall wrote:Hey all,
Got a somewhat strange problem I'm trying to solve.

I need to connect a thunderbolt UAD satellite to a computer with a thunderbolt port, while using the i/o from a computer without a thunderbolt port.

The studio I need to work at has its i/o hooked up with a mac tower that is older than thunderbolt, and what I am hoping to do is use a mac mini with thunderbolt to run pro tools and use the tower as a slave i/o hub. This way I can get all the studio's rack gear and console and also use all the my plugs.

I know how to use the tower's hard disk as a slave by connecting it to the mini with firewire but does anyone know how to get the tower's i/o to show up on a Pro Tools session opened with the mac mini?

Thanks in advance!

Hi,

In short order:

1. YOU CANNOT DO THIS. Mac cannot use another computer's audio IO as an aggregate device.

2. What you CAN do, is take your thunderbolt computer, and use ADAT Lightpipe to go from the other IO (the older one) into your audio interface.
I cannot possibly give you a more specific setup clue since you did not mention what audio interfaces are being used in this situation.

3. I highly recommend you create a "slave" session on your UAD computer, by printing the individual tracks with the plug ins. You do this by outputting each track to its own buss, and create a new audio track for each track, with that buss as the input. Then you get the sound you need. I've done this for years and years and years, with nary an issue.

Once you are done working at this other studio, you come back to your original "Master" multitrack session, and import your NEW audio tracks from the slave session.

Just make sure you label stuff neatly and understandably.
Cheers.

kslight · Post by **kslight** » Wed Nov 19, 2014 8:16 am

My solution would work, according to UA's documentation. You lose performance, yes, *obviously*...but short of buying a new thunderbolt computer for the studio or an internal UAD system for the old tower...you're always going to impose some kind of limitation or performance sacrifice if you want to do this, that's just how it is. Giant douche or turd sandwich, pick one workaround.

crunchitall · Post by **crunchitall** » Mon Dec 08, 2014 11:02 am

Just confirmed with UAD that the adapter can only connect firewire devices to thunderbolt computers and not the other direction. Sooo guess I'm out of luck for now.

Message Board

Using Mac tower as a slave

Using Mac tower as a slave

So... details?

Re: Using Mac tower as a slave

Re: So... details?

Who is online