The inevitable!

[thxgoon]

tweeksound wrote:

I'm seriously contemplating 3 PreSonus DigiMax FS's and the RME Audio HDSP 96/52 PCI card for 24 chanels of pre's, converters, and ADAT ins and outs.

Sweet! Let me know how well those interface with PT if you don't mind. When I was looking no one could give me a straight answer how well non digidesign hardware would work. I'd say with that much I/O and the mackie you'll have quite the workstation!

[tweeksound]

I'm pretty sure they won't work with PT. PT is very proprietary about what interfaces will work. I could be wrong. The ADAT of the 002 might allow me to use 1 of the presonus'. I do enjoy using PT so what I plan to do is record with a Cubase and then just import the tracks into a PT session.
The Mackie's however are very unlikely to work, but again, until I try it, I won't know.

[tweeksound]

Well, it's been almost 3 months since my original post so I thought I'd give an update.

I ended up going with pcaudiolabs.com for my new DAW.
It's a Q9300 quad core 2.5Ghz and has the RME Hammerfall HDSP 9652.
I had a couple freezes while starting windows that required a reboot.
PC audio labs were great with support.
They fixed the issue within 20 minutes of me calling, by remote access.

Right now I'm getting by on just one 8 channel Presonus Digimax FS and love it but I plan to get another soon.

I'm using Reaper and Sonar 5 producer. (Mostly Reaper though)

What a step up in just about every way!
Never let anyone scare you from using a PC based DAW.
Going to school, there was always >15 minutes before class spent fixing the Pro Tools set up to actually work and even the teachers had trouble.
I think it was because there were so many different people using it that there was always something being changed to fit someone else's work flow.

I've done a couple dozen sessions so far including 3 long live concerts and I have not had a single hiccup.

Very happy with every link in the chain.

[thxgoon]

Sounds great! Thanks for the followup!