Pulsar Digital Inputs

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Jonathan T
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Pulsar Digital Inputs

Post by Jonathan T »

Hello

I have a system with three Pulsar cards. Two have SPDIF digital inputs (phono) and one AES (xlr) on the breakout cables. I have a mic preamp with digital outputs i'm trying to get to work through the Scope digital inputs. The preamp has AES and SPDIF outputs and I've tried both without success. I know the SPDIF works as I ran it into the digital input of a DAT player successfully.

All the sample rates are set to 44.1. Is there a trick or setting for the Pulsar cards I'm missing? I've been trying the three SPDIF input sources from the Hardware IOs.

Thanks

Jonathan
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valis
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Re: Pulsar Digital Inputs

Post by valis »

You need to set the sync source in your settings. In Scope's Samplerate Settings, you will see your sync sources and slave/master toggle. What order they appear in will depend on the card and version (Pulsar2 vs 1 etc). For me, I see SPDIF & AES at the top of my sync sources, and on hte left I can toggle my optical port's format between ADAT & SPDIF. Red light tells you what sees a sync source properly.

Some devices will slave via SPDIF, but in the consumer and inexpensive preamp realm many external devices can only be master, so Scope might need to be slave (refer to the device's manual for more information). Some devices also only output one samplerate (44.1 or 48 KHz).
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Jonathan T
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Re: Pulsar Digital Inputs

Post by Jonathan T »

Thanks Valis

I'll try this when I get up tomorrow (I'm in the UK).

I was going through the samplerate settings so I'll do some more. I've certainly seen one red sync light there.

It's an Audient Mico (discontinued now) and it's pro quality. It can be slaved via wordclock but I'll try it as master.

Jonathan
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valis
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Re: Pulsar Digital Inputs

Post by valis »

I don't see the manual offhand, but it looks like the unit supports quite a few options so you should be able to slave it to Scope.
AudientMico_02-pBkZs0up_i1nfkIHcP.spoAGy4AGYeBS.jpg
AudientMico_02-pBkZs0up_i1nfkIHcP.spoAGy4AGYeBS.jpg (123.1 KiB) Viewed 1184 times
Looking at the above pic, you can see the sync & samplerate settings on the left. Reading this page shows that the unit can sync to "External Sample Rate: Any between 32kHz and 192kHz"

This page shows the available sync settings and also indicates you can have optical & (RCA) spdif going at the same time.

Checking the Audient site also shows this little tidbit: https://support.audient.com/hc/en-us/ar ... -Recorders

I don't recall if Scope supports the 'professional' bit set on SPDIF, but I know that I can toggle that setting on my RME interfaces and I switch them to ON to connect that to AES on Scope. So maybe converting to AES (RCA > XLR with the right ohm load) will work if nothing else does.
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Jonathan T
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Re: Pulsar Digital Inputs

Post by Jonathan T »

Well - that worked thanks. Yes the Scope system needs to be in slave mode.
I'm stil sorting out thew various combinations of optical, coaxial and AES/EBU and the various sync sources but I have a working system.
It's interesting that Mico has a slight compression on its analogue outputs compared to the coax digital. I guess it's just a product of the circuitry, the digital must be using the Mico A/D converters and the analogue the Scope converters.
I'm off to investigate the Toslink next, either the Scope optical inputs or the RME ones. I also have a couple of RME cards in other computers although they aren't part of my main recording setup.
It looks like the Mico external sync is only from its BNC wordclock input so I would have to add a wordclock master to achieve that. Presumably the Pulsar cards would slave to an external master clock similarly to how they slave to Mico.

Jonathan
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valis
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Re: Pulsar Digital Inputs

Post by valis »

With a sync card the Scope cards can be master or slave.
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Jonathan T
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Re: Pulsar Digital Inputs

Post by Jonathan T »

Aha
Finding one might be tricky!
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Re: Pulsar Digital Inputs

Post by garyb »

clock travels from output to input.

to get clock to a device, the device must have an input.

master or slave is not that important. what is important is that there is only ONE master.
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