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Hello people,

I need help with a nasty problem I've got.

I have two Pulsar II cards (connected with the STDM cable) and they link up to my external mixer (Yamaha 02R96) through ADAT optical (3x8 channels I/O being used). I have set the SFP software to slave the cards to the external mixer, as I've heard that you get best results by using the clock in the unit where A/D is being used, also I wish to be able to use the mixer easily without having the PC online.

Now, if I switch off the mixer (which I need to do at some times) while still running the PC with Pulsar cards, I get this error:

"Unexpected DSP overload!" with the option of retry and cancel. It also gives me the advice to "reset" the samplerate.

This causes the two following problems:

1) If I turn on the mixer again at this time - the ADAT input channels have full level of whitenoise nuking my speakers.

2) Cubase SX drops the ASIO Scope driver (switching to some ASIO direct X rubble)

Clicking retry in SFP does not help, popping same error msg after a few seconds, and cancel kills the samplerate all together.

Only solution I have so far is:

1) Be very, very happy if I didn't have the controlroom level at high volume, killing my NFM's.
2) Turn on mixer
3) Set samplerate in SFP to master
4) Set samplerate in SFP to slave again
5) Apply the ASIO Scope driver *again* in Cubase SX as it now uses some other #¤"¤#
6) Pray that it works now, and I get to avoid tinnitus yet another day.


Problem exist in both SFP 3.1 and 3.1c.

Isn't it possible to slave to external equipment without these awful problems ??

I would hope that SFP resyncs as soon as I switch on the external source again, but it doesnt ! It just flips !

Also, is it possible to have it as slave, but with ability to "fall back" to being master if slave source drops ??

Heeeeeeelp !!

/Magnus

Sorry guys... didn't see I choose the General forum for this...

Crosspost or not crosspost...

Could anyone move it ?

/Magnus

why do you turn off your desk while it is connected to a live system?

wayne asks right question. No surprise strange things occur - a digital device must to be a master or slave. There is no such thing as no clock. If there is no clock present for a device it becomes weird and does unexpected things. Ok if you are forced to turn your mixer off while the computer is on you can do a sequence of simple things that can avoid getting in your troubles:
1. Turn your Pulsars to 'master'
2. Turn the 02R off.
3. (Things to do while 02R off)
4. Turn the mixer on
5. Turn your Pulsars to 'slave'

It's that simple on a mac with cubase 5.1. Previously (4.1) I had to close cubase before switching to master. Hope it's the same with SX on pc.

Now everything should be ok.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: samplaire on 2002-11-26 04:39 ]</font>

Thanks for the responses.

I'll try to explain why I feel it is a problem with my setup.

The reasons for "turning off" are two:

1) Sometimes I wish to use the computer without running the desk. Being forced to jump into SFP and load another project or changle samplerate/clocking settings every now and then isn't a very userfriendly way of managing this. If my whole rig behaved like that, I'd need a several pages long checklist of things to perform before I could "get going" in the studio.

2) The Yamaha 02R96 is a new digital mixer and however lovely it is - unfortunately it has some quirks and annoying baby-bugs. Sometimes rebooting the mixer is the best way to proceed.

Many digital hardware things have the "auto" option of clocking to a digital source, with the possibility to "fall back" to an internal source when the external isn't present. I see no reason why this wouldn't be possible with the SFP platform. Giving a DSP overflow error and killing ASIO isn't a good response to this from SFP.

I'm sure there must be others who have encountered the same problems ?

/Magnus

For anyone wondering, I'm right now in the process of setting up my new rig around the 02R96, therefore many things are in chaos...

A NEW problem showed up now that I try to start tracking in Cubase SX with the equipment described above.

I get frequent cpu spikes in the PC, resulting in heavy audio dropouts, when the SFP is set to slave to the incoming ADAT source from the mixer. Making SFP master & mixer slave removes the CPU spikes. And this is in a Cubase SX project with only 4 tracks of audio ?!??!?

The sync was taken from the "second" Pulsar II-cards ADAT. Maybe the sync should be taken from the primary card... :/

/Magnus

1) Always slave card 1.

2) It is generally a bad idea to sync anything via adat signals, as they have more jitter than other digital formats. So: Use s/p-dif or aes/ebu instead. (Even better: WordClock.)

3) The right way to do it is offcourse to have a masterclock generator that all other devices aer slaved to. (NanoClocks, NanoSyncs, AarksyncII, Rostec etc.)

Kim.