PLEASE DIGI! Digital distortion and glitches HD!

[brianjanthony]

In my case, all my gear is in one rack floor to ceiling. Just got done with a 6 hour mixing session (ugh my head) and not one glitch. Control room is a balmy 83 degrees. (even with a new 12000BTU ac running.) So maybe it is heat and maybe it is not. It cannot hurt to air it out, but I don;t know if heat is the culprit.

In an effort to help us help ourselves till DIGI CHIMES IN HERE... I'll state some random ideas to see if any of us come up with anything.

Is everyone that is having problems using an external clock? If so, maybe the 192 just won't play nice with other clocks.

Are the BNC cables we're using affected by heat? Maybe the cable gets so hot sitting behind the rack that it actually affects the impedance or noise rejection of the cable (this may be total crap...I;m guessing here).

Do legacy devices like the 888 or 1622 being plugged in, AND using external clocks cause the problem?

My 192 is about a year old. If it cannot handle the use, I am in trouble. My brother uses his Mix system day in/day out for 5 years now with no probs. I envy him now..

I'd really like someone at Digi to let us know if these issues have been reported before. Heck, if this is a bug in the 192 (or a certain generation of em), at least I won't spend time and $$ looking in another direction...

bri

[Lee Blaske]

In my case, all my gear is in one rack floor to ceiling. Just got done with a 6 hour mixing session (ugh my head) and not one glitch. Control room is a balmy 83 degrees.

If the control room is 83 degrees, I'll bet the temperature in that rack (especially towards the top) could be a lot hotter. Might be interesting to stick the probe of a digital thermometer in there to see what's happening. Are the fans in the 192 running at a relatively low speed, or are they really cranking?

Lee Blaske

[crizdee]

Hello,

I just thought i would share my experiences with you, just in case. I have had 3 seperate occasions when i have had this! the 1st was a pci monitor card for a 3rd screen? had to ditch it in the end it was causing too many problems, very similar to yours. The second was a 1622 not being clocked correcty, i removed all sync cables and made sure all of them were connected correctly and the correct way round. the 3rd was the analogue board in my 192, i just took it out and cleaned everthing and put it back and that was it. and this did happen when the heat was on!! obviously a slight connection problem and the heat was expanding things and moving things around.

A few obvious things also to check that sometimes catches people out: check you digital input assignments in your i/o setup if one is selected and nothing is connected to it or what is connected to it is not connected with a sync cable then you will get clocking noise. and also any external digital devices are set to external sync.

Regards

Chris

[DigiTechSupt]

Bryan (and anyone else experiencing this...) - a couple questions:

1. Have you tried the steps in the 'General Troubleshooting' sticky at the top of this forum?
2. Do you have ADC enabled? What happens if you disable it during recording?
3. Have you tried it without the Big Ben?
4. Where are your Playback Engine settings at?

Also - please give complete configuration information on your system, how everything is hooked up and which versions of PT and your OS. Be as specific as possible - it helps immensely when trying to troubleshoot.

[minister]

(and anyone else experiencing this...) - a couple questions:
1. Have you tried the steps in the 'General Troubleshooting' sticky at the top of this forum?

yes. (always)

2. Do you have ADC enabled? What happens if you disable it during recording?

no. (i don't use it during record.)

3. Have you tried it without the Big Ben?

don't have a big ben, but a lucid syn gen...same idea. haven't tried it with it off, though. yet, this didn't happen with mix plus and an 888 and the same clock.

4. Where are your Playback Engine settings at?

default 2

this doesn't happen to me nearly as much as bryan. it is only intermittent. (i am starting to believe that it is heat related as my ac in the equipment room was out for while during the winter and was just fixed about a month ago....hmm...i'll clean it out and watch the temp [usually 68º])

mac g5 dual 2.5, os 10.3.8, pt hd|2, 6.9, 192 (no add'l cards), sync i/o, scsi atto, glyph trip with three drive bays, a/d feeds 192 via AES, lucid ssg 192 sync generator as master clock. i have 2 focusrite isa 110's and it happens with either, or with my focusrite isa 428, or my ua 2-610, or my api 3124's.

[brianjanthony]

Sorry for the long post guys....

Bryan (and anyone else experiencing this...) - a couple questions:

1. Have you tried the steps in the 'General Troubleshooting' sticky at the top of this forum?

YES

2. Do you have ADC enabled? What happens if you disable it during recording?

I do not use it during record

3. Have you tried it without the Big Ben?

Yes. And Big Ben is a relatively new adition. I was having weird drop out kind of probs and glitches in winter, before Ben.

4. Where are your Playback Engine settings at?

256
99
48
44
dce depends on mix/record
level 2

Also - please give complete configuration information on your system, how everything is hooked up and which versions of PT and your OS. Be as specific as possible - it helps immensely when trying to troubleshoot.

Dual 2gig g5
Internal Seagte SATA rec drive
external seagate fw drives with oxford 911 chipsets
(i never record to more than 1 drive per session)
Mac 10.3.9 (it happened much farther back than .9 though)
mics into pres
octopre/twintrack pro/voicemaster pro/presonus digimax
run into 2 analog cards in a digi 192 IO
(octopre to card 1, others to card 2 and 1622)
out to power amps
Digi 16222 IO plugged into Legacy port
Big Ben Clock BNC out to 192 clock in (not loop) BNC
Big Ben BNC into 1622 IO clock in BNC
Pro Tools 6.9
Always 24 bit 44k
Waves Platinum, T-Racks, Dig plugins bundle (Focusrite, Reverb One, fairchild, etc), Bomb Factory, etc
All balanced Mogami and Canare wires, well shielded etc.

Here's the stuff I hear on regular yet intermittent basis:
the Dat Scrub effect, when recording vocals esp
goofy swishy digital crap when recording things like acoustic gtr lead or "hi end" stuff, it seems
mic drops in volume levels for no apparent reason.

My own thoughts...
could my 2nd analog card be bad? (its not yet paid for and less than a year old i think)

could heat change the impedance of the clock wires, over the course of a session, causing errors (but then why wouldnt those errors be more chronic, not intermittent, on long sessions.

what does Digi recommend for ventilation. Are standard racks to narrow in the side dept? Do I need fans just for the 192? Or are there lots of people with it crammed in a rack not experiencing this. CR temp is important I'm sure. But the only temp that really matters is what's behind the rack. Aft all, my CR is air conditioned. It just also happens to have a 16 space rack with lots of hot gear in it.

HEAT ASIDE, what else could it be?

Brian

[minister]

My own thoughts...
could my 2nd analog card be bad? (its not yet paid for

ahhhhh...HA! maybe if you finished paying for it

[DigiTechSupt]

minister - do you possibly also have your CPU usage set to 99% (or higher than 95%)?

If so, I'd like to find out if anything changes if you move it to 85-90%.

[minister]

minister - do you possibly also have your CPU usage set to 99% (or higher than 95%)?

If so, I'd like to find out if anything changes if you move it to 85-90%.

yes! i moved it down to 85%. i have a session tomorrow...let's see how we do. thanks for your time!

[Tubz]

I also have this problem. It seems to happen in recmode only. I'm always in 44.1 khz. No external clock. 96 i/o. I noticed that it stopped when I went from 1 dsp 48 tracks to 2 dsp 64 tracks. And then I reduced the buffer to 128 or 256 samples. This reduced the pci activity I think... Anyway, it hasn't occured since, but it was there maybe 3 times a day, the last couple of days, during heavy vocalsessions.

Tubz