I've got 64 ADAT sources feeding the STM 4986 with the direct outs sending to 40 channels of ADAT (5 x modules) which are then interfaced with another DAW for summing.
I've also got 8 of the 16 I/O from the A16U interfaced in Cubase SX as as external inserts for analog hardware.
I've got another ADAT I/O interfaced with an RME ADI4 DD which is sending/receiving AES signal from 4 x hardware reverbs which are being bussed to various tracks in the Creamware mixer and then returned to 4 x aux busses in the summing DAW.
The Scope system tells me that I'm out fo DSP resources when I try to patch any more devices. This may be because the long cable from card 1 to card 2 is restricting my STDM bus a bit. It would be nice to have a few more analog patch points, but it's not imperative because I can also strap analog gear across the inserts and aux busses of the summing DAW. I may also revert to a simpler STM mixer tomorrow and see if I can lighten things up a little bit.
If there is any way to "reset" the DSP allocation in the Creamware environment to maybe squeeze a little more out of it, that would be nice, but it's not a deal breaker. I'm pretty amazed that this system will do what it's already doing........and it's doing it (streaming a 40 track project in Cubase)SX at 3ms latency without even breathing hard. My old RME system would be running at 512- 1024K buffers minimum and would have probably crashed 10 times today doing what I'm doing. My hat is off to whoever wrote the Scope drivers. This system has been running nonstop for 10 hours and has been tortured a bit and hasn't crashed once.
Very stable. I had a few sleepless nights worrying about whether this new system would fill my needs (which are almost exclusively mixing), especially given the rather unorthodox routing/clocking scenario I use but it's coming through like a champ and I'm glad I made the switch.
