Pulsar 2 card make clicking sound only in cold weather

[strengdal]

Hi friends!
My Pulsar 2 card make clicking sound, only in cold weather. It is only from some of the channels for ADAT in? Sometimes it goes away, other times when it is cold, it get more and more clicks to finaly making realy loud digital noise. The external adat preamps get out of sync as well in cold weather. If the pc have been on for half an hour and it is hot in the rom. The clicks goes away.
The cable is very sensitive to, if someone jump in the rom it start clicking again. but this is the main cable that is sensitive, not the adat cable? I did try with contact spray, but did not help. I love this card so much, do not want to change system. Any help highly appreciated.
Strengdal

[Bud Weiser]

Hi friends!
My Pulsar 2 card make clicking sound, only in cold weather. It is only from some of the channels for ADAT in? Sometimes it goes away, other times when it is cold, it get more and more clicks to finaly making realy loud digital noise. The external adat preamps get out of sync as well in cold weather. If the pc have been on for half an hour and it is hot in the rom. The clicks goes away.
The cable is very sensitive to, if someone jump in the rom it start clicking again. but this is the main cable that is sensitive, not the adat cable? I did try with contact spray, but did not help. I love this card so much, do not want to change system. Any help highly appreciated.
Strengdal

What do you prefer ?
Blow dryer, heat gun or more climate change ?

"If the pc have been on for half an hour and it is hot in the rom. The clicks goes away."

What´s "hot" ?
Where do you live ?
Do you work in (very) cold rooms ?
If yes,- why ?

And ... gimme a chance,- I always wanted to jump in a ROM, but all my gear refused unfortunately.



Bud

[at0m]

Hi,

I suspect some condensation (?) near the connectors, when the temperature changes. Recently, I've moved to "the shed" behind the house (ok, fancy shed), so I do take care to keep temperature somewhat sensible there during days/weeks that I'm working there, also overnight. Never get it too cold, so when I eventually want to use the gear again, it doesn't need to get all that much warmer.
To manage the heating, you could use some timer device that turns up the heating somewhat before use.

Also I've placed moisture absorbers in the different rooms where electronic gear is either stored or used, to prevent condensation as much as reasonably possible.

Most of the above would be in vain when your location is outdoor gigs or venues. There you could try turning up the gear beforehand, too, and maybe use some ~sealed containers in which the gear operates. Same thing for the container: keep it dry using moisture absorber.

Another thing to try would be different ADAT cables that are a better fit. In another topic I've explained how Mutec-style cables work best for me (the ones with black plastic ends), and Sssnake with metal heads need excessive force to get pushed both my DSP cards' daughter boards and my ADAT convertors.

Hope this helps.


PS: Bud, woh, integral quote from the post exactly above your reply. Without that quote, we'd all be utterly confused as to who'd you'd be talking :p [/sarcasm]

[borg]

static electricity?


be careful with a too dry environment! especially in dry, cold weather.

[valis]

Atom may be correct. A few other thoughts:

It may also be worth removing and cleaning contact points between the i/o daughterboard and the main PCB for your Scope card(s). To do this I *highly* recommend using nothing but CAIG deoxit 100% if you can, followed by 5%, never use 'tuner contact cleaner' or similar things as they're caustic, and be aware that even 99-100% isoprobyl can leave residue (all %'s under 95% are to be avoided). 100% acetone can work too but you need to be careful not to let this go anywhere but the metal contacts so I don't recommend this. In any case this will be the simplest thing to do.

While you have the daughterboard off, I would suggest checking your capacitors on your card and on the i/o expansion daughter board for signs of leakage and/or capacitor bloating. The correct way to check caps is with a meter, but it's usually essential to test capacitors out of circuit unless isolation can be arranged and or verified (desoldering 1 leg is a common 'hack' but I wouldn't suggest this to the inexperienced). The reason for this is the cap needs to be verified to pass no DC (or almost none), ie, to show no positive voltage for a DC test. And typically the voltages you test with would potentially harm nearby components on the same circuit.

[Peter Drake]

+1 on Valis' suggestion on capacitors. There can be thermal dependencies with some types going bad. If it were me I would just keep things warm enough to avoid trouble, and if a capacitor fails it's an easy thing to diagnose and fix as has been discussed elsewhere in the forum.

[Bud Weiser]

PS: Bud, woh, integral quote from the post exactly above your reply. Without that quote, we'd all be utterly confused as to who'd you'd be talking :p [/sarcasm]

Well, I had and still have a hard time understanding the question when reading:
"My Pulsar 2 card make clicking sound, only in cold weather"

Weather is outdoor,- at least for me,- and I understood electric gear has it´s temperature limits to operate properly.
In addition, most have (over)heat problems and I never heard from cold.
That´s why I asked what is heat and what cold.

The rest is my kind of humour,- it´s fun.
Reading between the lines means I don´t see any connection between cold weather and PCI card audio clicks unless you put your computer outside in the snow.
SCOPE PCI cards produce some heat themselves and in addition it´s build into a tower or rackmount ATX case together w/ other components also producing heat ... so much you need at least air cooling for.
So, that cold weather and/or cold rooms thingy seems to be nonsense,- no ?

In my old house, the coldest rooms were the best for home-studio and many computers, external rackmount hardware and keys.
All the shizz produced so much heat I rarely needed the heating at all.
Now, I´m under the roof and in summer I get heat problems w/ the machines.

Anyway,- a bit more precise descriptions of issues/failure would be great instead to be in the dark.



Bud

[strengdal]

Hi! Thanks for help guys!
Sorry for my bad english, What Im trying to say is : if the temperature drop in the room, like open the door to get fresh air from outside, my pulsar card start to make noise. What can be the reason? I have two pulsar2 cards and one expansion card connected together so I have 18 sharc processors with win xp.I use 32 channels for preamps in adat, but it takes time before the adat in the samplerate settings box stop blinking, maybe 30 minutes from starting the pc. The cards is from the 90s so they are old now, but the system is insane good, so I do not want to upgrade to another card. The main cable plugs is very sensitive to, but 10 years ago it did work fine.

[valis]

Main cable plug for... the system? For the adat preamp? For the whole room?

Temp drops causing noise could be multiple things, but is this noise on the ADAT pre's or for ASIO clicks...or?

Also, please read this post and give us enough information in a step by step manner if you want useful feedback. We can't fix this for you, but we CAN provide any information that comes to us to help you troubleshoot.

[strengdal]

Main cable plug for... the system? For the adat preamp? For the whole room?

Temp drops causing noise could be multiple things, but is this noise on the ADAT pre's or for ASIO clicks...or?

Also, please read this post and give us enough information in a step by step manner if you want useful feedback. We can't fix this for you, but we CAN provide any information that comes to us to help you troubleshoot.

Hi! The noise is only from the input of the adat, when having the daw in record and monitor on for the adat. The playback is always ok in my daw using asio, no problem there. When I start up the pc I always check if the synq is ok in the Scope samplerate settings, and I can se it is a problem there, the ADAT A and B in my pulsar 2 (2 ) card is blinking red for 30 minuts, but after that, it is no more blinking and it is ok. but if the temperature drop it start blinking again. What do you think? Is it some kind of restoration I can do for this old but great sound card? But the big cable that have all the connection is verry fragile and make errors if I touch it. The ADAT cables is great no problem there.

[valis]

What ADAT i/o are you using? It sounds like a clocking issue.

1. Poor quality cables
2. Poor cable connector *seating* (large connectors)
3. component failure in the clocking circuits for your Scope card and/or the ADAT

Troubleshooting 1&2 requires new cabling, #3 requires swapping additional gear around using the ADAT ports until you find the culprit. You can also inspect boards for burnt components, leaking components (bad solder is much harder to see but occurs over time) and leaky capacitors. A quick search will reveal more on how to inspect PCB boards & caps than I can do justice with here.

[strengdal]

What ADAT i/o are you using? It sounds like a clocking issue.

1. Poor quality cables
2. Poor cable connector *seating* (large connectors)
3. component failure in the clocking circuits for your Scope card and/or the ADAT

Troubleshooting 1&2 requires new cabling, #3 requires swapping additional gear around using the ADAT ports until you find the culprit. You can also inspect boards for burnt components, leaking components (bad solder is much harder to see but occurs over time) and leaky capacitors. A quick search will reveal more on how to inspect PCB boards & caps than I can do justice with here.

Ok! Thanks valis!