s/pdif light blinks, no audio signal, .. and it worked yesterday. Ensemble and Mbox

[TheSetup]

Howdy,

Yesterday I was able to open a Ptools session, make a new track, set it to the spdif input and record onto it using my apogee ensemble as a mic pre and A/D converter .. today not so much.

When it worked I had no blinking lights, no sample rate sync issues, and virtually no stress in my life .. hehe.

TODAY however, is not the same as yesterday. My setup is the same as yesterday with one change. I tried to be super cool and attempt to sync logic pro 8 to pro tools 8 using the instructions I found in this DUC thread. .. I have been unsuccessful so far. BUT, i did develop a new problem.

with the same settings as yesterday (to the best of my knowledge) I attempted to once again record through my apogee into the mbox via spdif. but now the spdif light blinks as though it cannot finish syncing up with the ensemble's time code. it does not give me any sync errors like 'the sample rate you selected is wrong you dummy' but it no longer sees the signal when I record enable the track (as the light blinks on and on into the night).

I attempted updating the firmware on my mbox but this did not solve the problem. I also noticed some other peculiar things occurring.

when pro tools isn't open, and I set the src sample rate to 48 on my ensemble, the spdif light on the mbox stops blinking. (i hoped this meant I could at least record with it in a 48 khz pro tools session) so I created a new 48 khz session and tried to record, but when I record enable a track (with spdif as the input) all I get is extremely peaked out signal. and no matter how much I turned up or down the volume knob for that channel the signal level on the meter remained the same.

to summarize:

spdif light doesn't blink when it's set to 48 khz but I get insane noise signal
spdif light does blink when I do a session at 44.1 khz but I get no signal.

I have also attempted switching out my spdif cable in the off chance it morphed into an rca .. but it didn't help.

I've spent much of my day searching these boards for a solution but have been unable to find when as of late, any help would be greatly appreciated.

(also as a p.s.) should I be able to see s/pdif as an output option in the I/O matrix? it seems like I should but currently I do not. I have rebooted with a spdif cable attached and detached and have gotten the same result both times.

Here are my comp specs / software specs in case they help:

Model Name: Power Mac G5 Quad
Model Identifier: PowerMac11,2
Processor Name: PowerPC G5 (1.1)
Processor Speed: 2.5 GHz
Number Of CPUs: 4
L2 Cache (per CPU): 1 MB
Memory: 9 GB
Bus Speed: 1.25 GHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.2.7f1

Apogee Ensemble:
Maestro 1.7
EnsembleDaemon v1.4
Driver v2.4.6fc4
Firmware v1.9.24
Hardware C
FPGA v1.31
CPLD v1.5

Mbox 2
Firmware 1.43

Pro Tools LE 8
Version 8.0cs3

Thank you so very much for taking the time to help me out with this. If you're close by, I'll send you some cookies.

[TheSetup]

update:

still no go but more strange happenings. when I attempt to record onto a track via spdif, still no sound. but when i switch the inputs to channels 1 or 2, the analog inputs, I get nothing but super loud white noise. I have nothing plugged into the analog inputs of the mbox at the moment. (this is when apogee ensemble src rate is at 44.1 and ptools session is as well) and the spdif light blinks

when I switch the src rate to 48 but keep the session the same I now get noise in all 4 channels with gaps of silence periodically (which I assume is a sample rate mismatch problem) and the error telling me the sample rates don't match. .. but the spdif light on the mbox no longer blinks. also, the noise on the fourth channel (spdif channel) is washing in and out like am ocean wave. it also has the gaps of silence though.

if anyone has ANY idea what might be going on here it'd be greatly appreciated. as you can tell, I'm baffled. and if there is for some reason an answer in another thread that I may have overlooked, a link would be super helpful. thanks again everybody!

[Eric Seaberg]

You're actually in the wrong forum. This is for M-POWERED, not M-Box. You may get a quicker response from people using the same hardware as you.

G'luck with your stuff...

[TheSetup]

thanks so much man, (as you can tell I haven't posted many times .. I see a bunch of 'm's and I think I'm in the right place!

discussion moved!