Question about the Fairlight Audio Accelerator

I am successfully running DaVinci 16 and the Fairlight audio editor on a 2015 Mac Book Pro (Mojave) with a Thunderbolt II attached eGPU (Radeon RX 580). I receive multi-channel (up to 22.2) output through an RME MADI PCIE card (housed in a separate SONNET Thunderbolt II enclosure) and an Antelope Orion 32 MADI audio interface.
While all OUTPUTS work for multichannel monitoring, INPUTS are still an issue as they are not recognized in the Fairlight software. I have read that this is a bug in DV 16 with my particular computer. However, I am contemplating the purchase of the Fairlight Audio Accelerator to enhance mixing in DaVinci 16's Fairlight panel. The PCIE card would be housed in a separate (Thunderbolt) enclosure. Does anyone here have first hand experience of this hardware and its functionality? Does it provide VST/AU plugin "acceleration" in a manner similar to comparable other hardware (i.e. Avid PT HDX, TC Electronics CORE, etc.)? What kind of real-world performance can I expect?
The ORION 32 interface provides optical MADI I/O ONLY and this would have to be converter to copper on BNC connectors to interface with the Fairlight accelerator (i.e. through a SONIBLE MADI hardware converter). Is it possible to use the accelerator card WITHOUT attaching an audio interface to its MADI BNC outputs?
Many thanks to your insights!
RB

[Peter Chamberlain]

Moved to the Resolve forum for exposure

The Fairlight Audio Accelerator provides one MADI I/O that u can connect to other madi devices. It’s doesn’t change plugin processing, which is still on GPU, but does run Fairlights native processing and I/O management.

You can operate in a PCIe expander on MacOS, I’ve previously used a Netstor which I believe is like Sonnet, but I don’t see a lot of benefit if you aren’t going to use the MADI or Fairlight Audio I/O

Does it provide VST/AU plugin "acceleration" in a manner similar to comparable other hardware

The Fairlight Audio Accelerator, besides providing MADI IO and connection to the Fairlight SX36 Audio Interface via DVI and enabling Talkback (and its configuration) and the Studio Monitor controls in Resolve's UI, provides full latency compensation and offloads the Fairlight Mixer and Fairlight processing to the Accelerator, providing more CPU cycles for third party plugins.

Is it possible to use the accelerator card WITHOUT attaching an audio interface to its MADI BNC outputs?

Core Audio is no longer active once the Fairlight Audio Accelerator is enabled in Resolve's Preferences.

The Fairlight Audio Accelerator then requires the presence of a valid clock either via MADI or with the Fairlight SX36 Audio Interface via DVI, otherwise Resolve's transport will not be active.

It’s doesn’t change plugin processing, which is still on GPU, but does run Fairlights native processing and I/O management.

Peter,

Has this always been the case? I thought audio plugins were strictly CPU based.

Many thanks for the helpful remarks!
So, as I understand it, I will need to have an audio interface attached to the Fairlight accelerator board in order to get audio I/O of the workstation. Also, all third-party VST/AU plugins would STILL run solely on the computer's own CPU (GPU?), ONLY Fairlight plugins would be "accelerated"?! Concerning delay compensation: is this only provided if an accelerator is present or does it delay-comp run on the CPU otherwise?
warm regards,
bg