I have a project coming up ( a live gig recording) in which I plan to use the following:-
 
The FOH desk is a Midas Pro1
I will take 24 tracks from this via one of the AES50 ports to a KT DN9650 and from there to a RME MADIface
 
I am using a i7 laptop equipped with a i7 2630QM cpu @ 2GHZ - old tech and 12Gb onboard RAM running W7 x64
 
It has a SSD both internal and external
 
I know the Midas desk is fixed at 96kHz..
 
DO I have to have the MADIface fixed at 96kHz too?
Do I have enough umph in my system to handle tracking 24 tracks simultaneously?
What settings would facilitate this?

Your best bet is to set up a practice run.

dwardzala
Your best bet is to set up a practice run.

I can't
 
I'm in UK
Gig is in Spain in 4 weeks time.
I only get access to the desk on the day.
I want to setup a template for the project before I go.
I'm also in the band so soundcheck will be a rush job....
I am borrowing the KT DN9650 and the MADIface and will only get those the day before.
 
I've never tracked so many tracks at once

Even without the desk, you could make a trial run tracking silence through the Madiface, 24 tracks at 96kHz. 

^^ This is what I would do 
All the best.

Quickly scanning the MADI-Face page on rme-audio.com, it seems it could possibly handle live resampling?:
 
"Therefore in stand-alone mode the unit automatically operates as active repeater, effectively doubling the maximum cable length of 100 m coaxial and 2,000 m optical. With two inputs connected the unit works as bi-directional format converter, converting coaxial to optical and vice versa simultaneously. This is even possible when the connected device uses sample rate converters for independent clocking - the sample rate can be different in both paths.
Thanks to a completely newly generated signal, jitter suppression by SteadyClock, and reclocking of the MADI output, the MADIface USB provides not simple but sophisticated format conversion."
 
Maybe worth taking this up with RME on their forum? Regardless, I agree that any form of test run would be better than none.

The only way to find if a particular setup can handle recording that number of tracks at once is to try it and see what happens. Assume you will be stuck at the desk's sample rate, set up a blank project to that rate and see if you can get a clean recording even if it's just 24 tracks of silence.

If there's no plugins or processing involved in Sonar that should make things easier, and the audio buffer can be set as big as it needs to be because latency won't be an issue.

My 'gut' thinks you should probably be OK, lower powered computers than yours ran major studios not so many years ago, but at lower sample rates of course. At the gig isn't the best time to find you need to adjust any settings, get everything set up and tested as far as possible beforehand.

According to:
http://www.theaudioarchiv...esources_File_Size.htm
 
24 tracks of 24 bit audio at 96kHz needs 55.3Mb/s. You could record that to a fast SD card! Your SSDs should be totally fine, and I would record to the internal one if you have the space.
 
R
 
 

I think you are out by a factor of 8......55296kbps  = 6912kBps = 6.75MBps

Twigman
I think you are out by a factor of 8......55296kbps  = 6912kBps = 6.75MBps

you are correct! should not be a problem at all as long as the audio interface is stable.
 
Thanks,
R