All 4 Mix cards fail Digitest, but system works. Help..!?
 

Hi,
I'm running a Mix system on a G4 / 933 with one Mix Core and 3 Mix Farm cards. Pro Tools version 6.4.1. The system works pretty well, for the most part. I had a couple of scary crashes a few weeks back, but haven't had any since then. I'm running Rosetta 800s off a 24-BIT Adat Bridge. The Rosetta's are the master clock.

But lately I've been getting strange dropouts during playback. It can occur either during recording or playback, they usually are very quick. The meters in the Pro Tools tracks and on the Master fader keep showing level, but the signal drops out of my main monitor outputs 1+2. It's been happening with increasing frequency. If they occur while recording, the track that's being recorded is still fine, even though the playback audio will have dropped out. So just this morning I ran Digitest to see if one of my cards might be acting up. I seem to remember that a couple of years ago when I last ran Digitest I had some kind of error on one of the cards. But today all 4 of them failed. They all seemed to have failed the final TDM Transmission Tests for each of the 7 DSPs A - F. I'm kind of confused. Could the system be working at all if they all failed this test? Isn't it kind of weirdly coincidental that all 4 cards would fail exactly the same way? Is it possible that the errors are erroneous, or maybe that something in the computer is causing it, something with the PCI slots or something? Or something with RAM? Is there a reliable way to test RAM for OS 10.3.9?

Just last week I bought a "spare" G4 / 933 that seems to be in very good shape. Wondering how had things need to get before I try swapping out computers. I use the system every day for work, so downtime is bad.

Any tips or thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks a lot! - Steve

Re: All 4 Mix cards fail Digitest, but system works. Help..!?
 

Well, as Emily Litella said "Never mind"... Just realized after more Googling that I needed to have the interfaces turned on. So all 4 cards now passed.

Still doesn't explain the playback dropouts however...?

Re: All 4 Mix cards fail Digitest, but system works. Help..!?
 

Never had dropouts on a mix system. If the audio files are fine, the problem is somewhere between your D/A and your speakers. I would try sticking something with level meter between each piece of gear between your D/A and speakers and see if it shows the dropouts consistent to what you're hearing. If you find constant levels during the dropout, the next piece of gear in the chain is the problem

Also if you're not using both halves of the ADAT bridge, try moving everything to the B side, and see if the problem persists. I suppose you could also just swap everything between A and B sides if you are using both sections.