001 hardly dealing with a 15k sine wave ???!!!

[jinglemaker]

Hi everyone!

Been reading your posts/replies for about a year, learned a lot, had a great time getting to know "you" and 6 months ago bought my first Digi 001. I soon found it to be the tool that I was looking for...flexible, smooth, user friendly, just as I expected, using PTFree for some time. BUT, I have a problem I cannot resolve... When I'm recording signals like sine, square waves or random-wave synth sweeps of frequencies ranging from 13 to 19kHz from DAT via S/PDIF to Digi 001, it seems they get distorted somehow. In the recording, quite noisy, bursts - like artifacts are added to the original signal occuring every 2 seconds. I've tried with different sample rates, different resolution... always the same.
I use ASE/EBU S/PDIF or coaxial S/PDIF output from Tascam DA-40 to Digi 001.
Well, posting my first question/topic here I'm loosing my virginity of a newcomer, and at the same time (and it's much worse) loosing patience with my - maybe 'coz I'm not a Pro?Tools - Digi 001. Any ideas?

jinglemaker

[marcusb]

Firstly, you have set your clock sync settings properly I assume ?

Secondly are you are electrically padding down the AES/EBU output before running it into the SP/DIF input ? The elecrical voltage of an AES/EBU signal is significantly higher (around 2-3V peak-to-peak) than the voltage used for S/PDIF (around 0.5V peak-to-peak).

If the above are both correct then some more detail here would really help ? How are you getting your signal in ? You mention the DA40 but don't mention if you are playing back from tape or or using the DA40 in A/D mode ? What is the source ? is it a synth, sampler, signal generator ? So many questions, so little time!

Cheers,
Marcus

[jinglemaker]

I am using digital outputs of Tascam, it has both AES/EBU (S/PDIF output) and COAXIAL (S/PDIF output). The signal on the tape is perfect. When I record it into a PTOOLS session (24bit/48kilo) it should theoretically remain "untouched", but instead it gets somehow distorted (with "clicks" and "pops" repeating every two seconds, but only with the signals of 13kHz and obove). i know, strange. But that's how it is.

Any idea would be very appreciated.

jinglemaker

[Bastiaan]

For this test's sake, i would suggest making the digi001 slave to the rca-spdif....because it does sounds like a sync problem

[Phil O'Keefe]

Yup, it's a word clock sync issue. You can not feed / record via the digital input(s) on the Digi 001 without having the sync set to the proper incoming port. Otherwise, the two devices (the Tascam and the Digi) will both be relying on their internal clocks, and will not be synchronized... resulting in pops, clicks, distortion and dropouts.

[Stone Knife]

what marcusb is saying, use the S/PDIF because it's voltage-matched to the 001 input. (or pad the AES/EBU)
This popping thing sounds like it may be a synch problem.
Is the 001 set as clock master and Tascam as slave, or how?

[jinglemaker]

Thanx to all of you, what a stupid thing...there is an option to choose between the three sync modes...OK, OK, OK, got it!!!

Fedja