I think something is dying digi 001 or mac:HELP

[b mcgibney]

First of all basic setup is 733 quicksilver with two external lacie firewire drives. dual boot 9.25.2 and 10.3.5 with 6.4 with the cs 9 update. About a week ago I noticed a few pops and crackles when I fired evetything up. It has gotten much worse . FYI I have both the mac audio outs and the digi outs running into an external mixer.

When I start everything up I get about a minute of complete digital hash coming out the digi 001 main outs----the noise is there even if I turn the gain down on the external mixer that everything is fed into . For the next 30 minutes or so I get random pops of noise , once in the right channel and then in the left. and then it settles down and is dead silent.

What the heck is going on here? this is the kind of antics I expect from 40 year old tube gear. One related? bit of info is at about the same time, my mac audio outs started broadcasting some chinese radio station. I double checked to make sure it was the computer and indeed it is. Also this problem occurs in both 9 an 10.

Usually when I trouble shoot tihs stuff I start with the basics and add stuff till the trouble appears.
FYI , My whole studio is on a dedicated circuit, 20 feet from the main panel in a single phase residential service area. AFAIK there are no radios stations operating near me, and this setup has been dead quiet for the last three years.

I have some decent paying sessions coming up over the next few weeks but am leery to take them on when my system is acting up. At this point I am reluctant to turn it off in case it does not start up again.

I've tried to describe as best I can but if more info would help with a suggestion please post and i will answer to the best of my ability.

Briguy

[b mcgibney]

I hate to do this but.............Bump

[dans]

Seems to me you need to start from scratch. Install fresh, clean system software on a newly formatted disc partition. Update to a supported OS release and then install and update PTLE. Install nothing else. Repair disk permissions. Fire it up. If you have crud coming out of your 001 outputs, then you have a hardware problem with the 001. Does the headphone output exhibit this noise? What about the other outputs? If I had to guess, I'd say you have some bad components in the 001 that "settle down" after the unit warms up. Just a guess.

In re-reading your post, I see you're dual booting and the problem is in both OSes...So, skip to "you have a hardware problem..." above. The RF interference is pretty common in connecting computer 1/8" jacks to audio systems. I really think your 001 is at the end of it's life. I actually have a spare breakout box if, in the end, you need to replace it. (I had a computer stolen with the PCI card in it.) Speaking of which, can you test the lightpipe outs from the card? That would help isolate the problem.

[Pete Weaver]

This sounds like it could be a clocking issue . . . except for the chinese radio part.
Still it would be worth it to go up to Windows and go down to session setup. Check your sync mode
and make sure that any digital devices are either slaving to ptle (internal setting) or driving it
(external).

Whenever I've gotten clicking noise it's been due to clocking issues.

[maccool]

Well, something's turned itself into an antenna! There's no shortage of Chinese radio broadcasts in Vancouver, so the Chinese part isn't much of a mystery, but which combination of components has become a receiver?

Do you still get the radio when the Mac is not connected to the mixer in any way?

Do you still get the noise from the 001 when it's not connected to the mixer in any way?

[b mcgibney]

Well folks I am VERY happy to report that the problem seems to be solved. Before it got better it got much worse. At the worst I was just getting a blare of noise. I opened up the computer as I was doing so I noticed that the pci to digi box connector was just slightly crooked ( The computer is in another room and the digi cable is stretched pretty tight ) I pulled it out and plugged it back in and all seems to well except the weirdness with the CD player I mentioned in another post.

Thanx all for your many excellent suggestions. This board is great!

Back to music now

Brian