poor sound quality = 192 problem? calling DigiTechSupt...

[Rader Ranch]

You know how audio sounds when it's going through a digital board clocked to 48 but the audio going through is 44.1? Totally grainy and funky, but still there. Well, my PT rig is sounding a good 1/3-1/2 way there, and for the life of me I have no idea why!!! SYNC, 192, ADAT bridge all seem to be operating normally, all cards pass digitest, tried all manner of restarts/powercycling/losing the legacy and SYNC boxes completely etc. but the hi end is just wrong, whether via 192 SPDIF>DAC1>ADAM's or 192 ADAT I/O>DA7>DMT12's. Didn't take a lightning strike or anything, just left the room for a while.

What in hell is this rig doing besides driving me crazy????


HD3 Accel, Dual 2.5, 10.4.9, 4G RAM, 7.4 cs2, SYNC, 192, ADAT bridge

[Irl Sanders]

Dump your digisetup and pref files for the sync, repair prefs, and shut down. Remove power cords from everything for 10 seconds. Re-plug and fire up.

Try changing the word clock coax cables?

[Rader Ranch]

Tried trashing DIGISETUP prefs and no power to units already, ng (interesting thing, there was a DigiSetup.OSX and DigiSetup Corrupt.OSX pref....wtf?). I assume you meant repair permissions not prefs. I don't see any SYNC prefs to be trashed, and there's a DAE pref folder, but no specific DAE pref file that I see either, which would have been a possible culprit in the old days. Don't see how i can be any cables either, since I've disconnected all except from teh HD card to the 192 to bypass the SYNC.

But I've sent a file to a friend to confirm I'm not crazy either. Sounds fine on his end, grainy as hell here, as does all the hi end in everything coming out of the 192. I haven't tried the outs from the ADAT bridge yet to see if they sound ok....I guess I should try trashing the whole DAE Prefs folder too.

[Rader Ranch]

tried trashing everything, nothing working.

[Shawn Simpson]

Are you listening to the analog outs of the 192?
Have you tried another output pair?
Have you tried another interface altogether?

It's not all that common, but it's not unheard of that the DAC card in the 192 can take a dump.

[Rader Ranch]

Analogue weren't used, but I made a quick cable for 1+2 and it's better, definitely, but not correct (you start second guessing yourself after hours of this crap).

Thing is, while all of the digital outs on the 192 exhibit the same problem, so do the outs on the ADAT interface. Is this becuase it ultimately still passes through the 192? I'd love to be able to definitevely blame the 192 and send it in.

This is my only interface, so I have to hope like hell someone has one to rent in Knoxville.

[Shawn Simpson]

So have you tried just running the system with the one 192, no adatbridge, internal clock, no sync cables hooked up at all?

Have you tried reseating all the cards and flex cables?

Have you tried taking the system down to a single card?

If there's one thing I know, it's that you can start to fool yourself after a while. But I also know that you have to isolate the system components to find a potential hardware problem like this and I can't tell from reading your posts what you've actually done. That's why I'm asking yes and no questions trying to offer some guidance.

[Rader Ranch]

So have you tried just running the system with the one 192, no adatbridge, internal clock, no sync cables hooked up at all?
Yes.

Have you tried reseating all the cards and flex cables?
Yes.

Have you tried taking the system down to a single card?
No. All the cards passed Digitest, doesn't seem likely for this kind of problem.

Hey Shawn, since you're from Nashville and I will probably have to go there just for a (any Digidesign) rental while this is fixed, what's the best place in Nashville to rent Digi stuff?

[Craig F]

Have you tried taking the system down to a single card?
No. All the cards passed Digitest, doesn't seem likely for this kind of problem.

that doesn't mean a whole h*** of a lot, I've had bad cards pass DigiTest

[Shawn Simpson]

Passing digitest doesn't rule out a potential card problem. For your own peace of mind you should try stripping the system down to a single core card and the 192 to see if the problem persists. It sounds like it's probably something funky in the 192 but until you eliminate every other potential there's no way to really know.

As far as rentals, Blackbird is great. Gear for Days might be cheaper.