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	product page	product page	product page	product page	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