Can you chain two UR284s?

Steinberg Hardware
#1

The Nuendo / Nuage hardware is very sexy, but far too expensive to consider for a project studio so I’m looking at the UR824 for a studio upgrade to replace my aging Frontier Designs PCI card.

Cubase selects a single audio source, so even if I had two UR824s plugged into different USB ports I could only select one.

Is there a way to chain a pair of 824s to provide 48 channels of I/o (and 16 analog channels), or is 8 analog and 16 ADAT the max i/o count for Steinberg interfaces in a Cubase environment?

Thanks!

#2

Hi therr

I’m sure you can use up to 3 UR824’ chained together, they even show 3 in a rack in the Steinberg promo video

Best Regards

Dave

#3

Hey, Dave.

Thanks, man. Three would be perfect. Could you link to that video?

It would be interesting to hear from someone at Steinberg on how that’s accomplished since Cubase can only point to one audio interface at a time. Not sure if the chaining is on the hardware end or there’s a switch to flip in the software.

#4

The UR824 has 2x ADAT inputs and outputs. This allows you to use one unit as a ‘master’, connected to your computer by usb, and then to connect one or two further units (UR824 or any other unit that uses ADAT) to the ADAT ins and outs. When properly connected, all two or three units show up in Cubase or the Yamaha DSPFx software.

Steve.

#5

Thanks, Steve.

So essentially you trade the i/o of the ADAT ports in the master to link in other units. However, that would chew 2 ADATs on the master, but only one each on units 2 and 3.

So in this config, you’d have 24 physical channels and an additional 16 light pipe channels - 8 from each unused ADAT port on 2 and 3.

Is my thinking correct here?

#6

The UR 824 is advertised as being capable of up to 24 track simultaneous recording. I’m assuming it is not possible to use all the ADAT ins and outs on three UR 824s linked together, because if it was Steinberg would have advertised the UR 824 as being capable of 40 track simultaneous recording. I’m assuming the 24 track maximum is related to what is considered manageable through USB2, although maybe not.

Steve.

#7

Well, the 24 tracks advertising could simply be 8 analog + 2 ADAT. No way of knowing for sure unless someone from Steinberg clarifies.

#8

Actually, thinking about it further, I don’t think it’s possible to have more than 3x UR 824s chained together, nor is it possible to have more than 24 simultaneous tracks available.

The two-in and two-out ADAT connections on the ‘master’ UR824 can only offer 8 tracks each (or only 4 tracks at higher bit rates). This is part of the general ADAT spec, not a limitation of the UR 824. So your theoretical idea of hooking up the spare ADAT in and out of your two ‘slave’ UR824s isn’t feasible because you would be attempting to transmit 16 channels simultaneously through the ADAT connections between the master and the slave UR824s.

Same would apply to focusrite Octopres, or any other ADAT equipped unit.

Steve.

#9

I use my UR 824 and two MR816’s to give me 24 I/O at 44.1/48k

the ur is the master and the two MR are 8 channel mic pre slaves.

the only PIA is that the two firewire units need to be connected separately as there’s no way to change sample rates without the MR software editor. Had they put a physical button on you could leave them unconnected.


works perfectly with direct monitoring on all 24 channels.


MC

#10

edit -> OOPS the previous post is the same but better worded, my mothertongue is Dutch <–

With the MR series it was possible to daisy chain up to 3 units for 48 channel count, BUT direct monitoring wasn’t possible for the other 2 slave units. The UR824 can only be expanded through ADAT which keeps good direct monitoring capabilities, I have it working but there are a few downsides on it like having the 2 other slave devices configured at forehand and this can only be done when the units are 1 by 1 configured as master (connected trough USB or firewire(when using the mr816)) configured and saved, the problem is when the non voillatil memory is damaged the confiuration has to be done again.

#11

So, it would be great is Steinberg could release an UR824 “sidecar”, only containing the same excellent AD/DA converters and the ADAT connectors. No need for all the additional electronics. Lower price, same quality, more channels.

Paolo

#12

Hi, I’ve got 1 Steinberg UR824 working in my recording studio, but 8 micro-inputs is not enough, so I want to order a second UR824. I still work with Cubase Elements 7 at the moment.
My questions:

  1. How do I connect the two UR824’s so I’ll be able to actually see all of and work with the 16 audio channels when recording 16 mikes at the same time? I want to see them all appearing on one PC screen. (step by step approach please)

  2. What kind of cable do I use for connecting them together?

Thanks!
Frank

#13

While I appreciate everyone’s input, what we have thus far is mostly speculation and conjecture.

What we don’t have are actual facts from someone who works at Steinberg. I don’t know why.

#14

No need for Steinberg official statement, ADAT is a standard and works as designed. So the adat ports of the 2nd and 3rd unit are only usable if the unit is the master, however the soundcard operation stand-alone do not support ADAT, so not possible!

#15

Yup!

Steve.

#16

As mentioned above, the first UR824 would the one you directly interface with, the others would be configured as AD/DA units (setup routing in DSP Mix) via ADAT. Another permutation with some compromises is if on a Mac, setup an aggregate audio device … this will let you use the full I/O capabilities of each unit while having them appear as a single logical device to your DAW.

#17

Thanks, Michael.

I recently purchased a Yamaha TF 5 mixer which, in addition to handling live sound duties, is also effectively three UR824s on steroids. :slight_smile: