PT8 + ProjectMix... RANDOM distortion! this is a bizaar issue...

[rickenplayer]

All,

I have Pro Tools M-Powered 8 with the ProjectMix I/O interface on my custom built PC, and everything works fine, but I get this bizaar behavior at least a couple times a day:

Randomly, the playback will be all distorted. I mean DISTORTED, as if it were played thru heavily blown out old speakers. My solution to it is I go to playback engine, choose another sample size (if im on 256 i go to 128, or if im on 128, i go to 256), click OK, then playback is normal again. On occassion, if this doesnt fix it, i close Pro Tools, power cycle the ProjectMix, and then all is well again.

On top of distorted audio, the LCD display on the ProjectMix shows random invalid characters. After doing the sample size swap in PT, it goes back to normal, with the help of a [bank select] shift up then down.

I have observed this problem kick in at any stage: playback, recording, me walking out of the room. I have a carpet floor...maybe static is causing something? Who knows?

Of course, I have every latest patch, driver, anything that needs updating, and there is absolutely nothing else wrong with the PC in general or recording with Pro Tools and any plugins.

Has anyone else seen this? A friend of mine says he had it with the FW1814, and I had it once or twice when I had a FW410. Could firewire be the cause?

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Steve

[Ludia]

Hi Steve,

Yes, same happened to me also on ProjectMix IO and PT8. I have to say I was fingling around with the M-Audio CP to change the cycle setting and especially the lower frequency sounds then were completely distorted.

I also power cycled the projectmix to get it back normal sounding again. The display hick-up you mentioned I haven't seen yet though but maybe because I didn't realy payed attention to it.

I've heard before from other ProjectMix IO users that sometimes once but more twice, three times a day they need to power cycle it because things get messed up like faders unresponsive, distortion etc. So I'm not quite sure this thing we're facing is PT8 related but indeed maybe some hick-up with the firewire port where the firmware doesn't know how to handle it well.

Just my thoughts


Regards, Luc


PS: By the way....is your ProjectMix Scrub button doing silly things in PT8 as well ??

[rickenplayer]

No, haven't noticed that scrub issue. Yeah, it's sounding more like a firewire issue to me, I actually saw the problem once in Adobe Premiere CS3, which I use the ProjectMix for audio with. The difference is that when I pause and play again in Premiere, it fixes itself.

I heard too from people to power cycle a few times a day, which is not the end of the world, but then again, I want my $1300 to work properly.

My friend who had similar issues with the FW1418 swicthed to the Delta 1010 and he says they went away.



Has anyone used the ProjectMix with an external word clock? I would like to know in general if it makes a difference, or maybe even fixes some issues?

thanks

[FFB]

i had this problem to.
the problem was my build in firewire with via-chip.
i bought a firewire pci card with ti-chip and everything is perfect now.
form more info click here
m-audio.com:
M-Audio Fire Wire devices perform best on a dedicated FireWire controller with a Texas Instruments (TI) chipset. Theses problems (pops, clicks, distortion, buzzing, etc) are often encountered when using onboard FireWire ports, including those with Texas Instruments chipsets. You can identify your chipset in the “IEEE 1394 Bus Host Controllers” category in the Windows Device Manager (Start>Run>devmgmt.msc). Undesirable chipsets include VIA, Ricoh, and NEC.

[DigiTechSupt]

Steve - this issue can have several possible causes, everything from drive issues to software conflicts to hardware failure.

You should make sure that your system is optimized per the info in the General Troubleshooting thread, then post a Sandra report so we can see if there is anything about your system that may be contributing to the problem.