Which bus should I ride?
 

Steve: My set up is a 9600/350/Newer G3/400

Slot 1 http://www.digidesign.com/ubb/images/icons/grin.gifD23 - Mix Core, Mix Farm, 3 Merle farms
Slot 2:Empty
Slot 3:Stock video card (20" #1)
Slot 4:3940uw w/ a 9G Cheetah on each bus
Slot 5:Miro DC30
Slot 6:Stock video card (20" #2)

Currently I use 3940 bus A for audio and 3940 bus B for video. It was recently suggested by someone on DUC that this setup was not good due to PCI bus bandwidth. They suggested using the system drive for video. What do you think? What about using the motherboard SCSI bus instead? Or is my setup fine the way it is? (I'm not having any problems except the capture window stutters terribly!) Thanks,

ripple FX:

Re: Which bus should I ride?
 

Thanks Steve - HEY, IT'S SUNDAY!! GO HOME!! http://www.digidesign.com/ubb/images/icons/wink.gif

3940 Audio was Cache Line @ 20
now Immediate @ 20

3940 Video was Cache Line @ 20
now Cache Line @ 10

DAE Buffer was 0
now 2

I'll try these this week. Thanks

ripple FX:

Re: Which bus should I ride?
 

Hi Rip,

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with your setup. Since you have a 6-slot Mac, and your 3940 is on a separate PCI bridge from your Mix card, it won't pose a problem for Pro Tools.

I don't know for sure what's causing your stuttering problem. I suppose it could be related to PCI bus performance, but I'm not sure.

The tip about using the Mac bus for video is not a bad one. Use the internal bus, however, since it's fast-SCSI.

Here are a couple of tuning tips you can try out with the 3940 before you go through the process of reconfiguring anything. Use the PowerDomain control panel to try the following settings:

For the video channel, use Cache Line in the video buffer settings, and try setting the bus speed to 10MB/sec.

For the audio channel, try Immediate or Cache Line in the video buffer settings (whichever seems to give the smoothest operation), and leave the bus speed at 20MB/sec.

Also, what is your DAE Playback Setting? We find that the default setting of 2 gives the best compromise between responsiveness and performance.

Hope this helps.

-Steve Rosenthal

Re: Which bus should I ride?
 

Let me know what happens.



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--Steve Rosenthal, Digidesign ETS

Re: Which bus should I ride?
 

Steve, one week with the above settings and all seems fine. The stuttering video capture window is still a problem though. I down graded the miro drivers from 1.2.1b1 to 1.1.1 but no change. The trouble has to be the addition of the chassis, but I can't live without the chassis so...

Thanks for your help.
ripple FX:

Re: Which bus should I ride?
 

Steve, Last week I got a -9073 error while bouncing-to disk four tracks of 44.1/16 audio (no edits) with a little fader automation to a split stereo file on the same drive. I changed the A bus setting from Immediate to Cache Line and the bounce was successful. I bounce-to-disk files all the time without incident, but this simple one choked.

Also, on another occasion I had to trash prefs (DAE, PT, DigiSetup) and I noticed my DAE buffer was 0 instead of 2. Should it default to 0 or 2?