d24/MIX farm slot order

[AEW]

According to the manual.

1. d24 card, primary
2. d24 card, additional (if applicable)
3. Mix Farm cards
4. DSP Farm cards
5. Sample Cell cards

Nick

[ July 27, 2001: Message edited by: AEW ]

[patchboy]

I know this has been discussed before (I searched, read, and I am now more confused) but what's up? I own a d24/vintage farm system in a Yikes G4. I am working with an artist who owns a Mix+++. To work at my house, we puled one of his Mix farms to use in my machine, so currently I have, in the following order:

MIX farm (1 888 attached here)
d24
dsp farm

I initially set it up, by my interpretation of the "expanded systems guide" with the d24 card first, followed by the MIX farm and the vintage farm, respectively. While this set up worked without errors, it seemed that PT had trouble accessing the vintage farm-"out of DSP" erors while trying to instantiate plugins that I know work on the vintage farms, with 2 or 3 available vintage dsp chips. So I ran Digitest, which said the system was misconfigured, and crashed when I told it to run anyway. So, after searching the DUC, I switched the order to the above, and Digitest was happy. But now I am having the following issues:

-When attempting to instatiate a plugin that would force dsp allocation to move something off the MIX farm to the dsp farm, a crazy screeching sound comes out of all outputs. Only quitting PT stops it.

-I occasionally see dsp farm chips full, displaying "<dsp code>"

-I lost playback on some, but not all tracks, (although they were still voiced, and showing meters) and on the left side of the Master fader (with an L1 on it, removing the L1 brought back the left side)

My system:
G4/350 yikes motherboard
384 mb RAM
OS 8.6
PT 5.1
Video card in PCI slot 0
Mix Farm
d24
dsp farm

In case you are asking "where's the SCSI card?" I am using a 2nd ATA as my audio drive (until all of this weirdness, all was good-43 tracks/ heavy edits no PCI errors). It doesn't seem as though that is my problem, although I could be wrong. I know I am compromising the pure troubleshooting ability by being so unapproved.

Sorry this was so long. So, um, any ideas?

[DigiTechSupt]

AEW, what manual did you find that information?

-Chapter 2 of the PT 5.1 Expanded Systems Guide shows that Mix Core and Farm cards always preceed d24 and DSP Farm cards. Therefore, patchboy's current card configuration is correct:
Mix Farm
d24
DSP Farm

Brent

[AEW]

Brent
Pro Tools Expanded System Guide (Ver...5.1)
Chapter 1 Introduction page 1 & 2
Heading...."Expanding a Pro Tools 24 System"
Quote:
You can add the following Digidesign cards to expand a Pro Tools 24 system:
. d24, expands DSP mixer resources, and provides up to 16 channels of I/O
. DSP Farm, expands plug-in and DSP mixer resources and provides up to eight channels of I/O
. Mix Farms, expands plug-in and DSP mixer resources and provides up tp 16 channels of I/O
Whether installing in a computer or an expansion chassis, the basic order of card installation is the same. Cards should always be grouped according to type and each type should be installed in the following order:
1 d24 card, primary
2 d24 card, additional
3 Mix Farm cards
4 DSP Farm cards
5 Sample Cell cards

Chapter 2 page 7 confirms the order. As far as I can see Patchboy has a PT 24 system with one additional Mix Farm card to be installed and no Mix core card as shown Chapter 2 page 5.

Have I got this wrong?

Nick

[patchboy]

This is exactly the point. The expanded systems guide says

"Whether installing in a computer or an expansion
chassis, the basic order of card installation
is the same. Cards should always be grouped according
to type, and each type should be installed
in the following order:
1 d24 card, primary
2 d24 card, additional
3 MIX Farm cards
4 DSP Farm cards
5 SampleCell cards"

However, this is gave me a misconfigured system, and goes contrary to what Brent of DTS has stated on this forum.

However, (currently with the MIX farm first) I have not had the problems again. They all seem to stem from the same session, so perhaps there is simply a problem with that session.

I will report back.

[ July 27, 2001: Message edited by: patchboy ]

[patchboy]

Well most of the problems have abated, anyway. I haven't had the screeching sound, but I sometimes get DAE error-1 when trying to instantiate a plugin that requires some reallocation of DSP (even if there is enough available), followed by a partial or complete loss of audio. Tracks are still voiced, there is simply nothing playing. And I have only been working for a day, so I can't be sure that the other problems won't reappear.

[AEW]

Patchboy sorry to hear of your woes, I'm glad I opted for a complete upgrade from my PT 24 to a Mix Plus to gain more DSP power.
Hope Brent can shed some light here or maybe someone else has over come this problem.
I'm glad you confirmed my reading of the manual, as I hate misleading anyone.

Nick

[DigiTechSupt]

Yes, this is indeed conflicting information and cause for great confusion.

-To confirm, the order as stated in Chapter 2 (i.e. Mix cards before d24 cards) is the correct order. The information in Chapter 1 is wrong. I will have this changed.

Brent

[ChaplainPC]

My experience is (9600/500g3Newertech) that when using the D24 card first before the mix farm(assuming you are only using 32 voices) you gain additional DSP(In my case another Reverb One or C4). It is true that Digi test says that the cards are misconfigured but for me this set up seems to be best.....
Pete

[patchboy]

Chaplain-

I think that you are right about greater DSP when a d24 precedes a Mix Farm, but only from the MIX farm. For instance, with the order I have now Mix Farm, d24, DSP farm, I notice that PT will fill up Mix chips with mixers before using the d24. It seems that with the d24 first, it always gets allotted its mixer, thus clearing one of the mix farm chips.

However, when I had the d24 first I had one problem (besides the others above), that has now cleared up, and does give me more dsp. With the d24 first, if I wanted to instantiate a plugin that required a Mix chip, while having only dsp farm chips open, it would simply give me the out of dsp error. Now, with the mix farm first, it does the plugin shuffle, and usually finds a home for it.

I don't know if you have this problem, or maybe you don't have a dsp farm along with the Mix farm, but that's just my experience. Anyway, since putting the Mix farm first, I've had no problems (except with one session, which I trashed and rebuilt), so I am gonna stick with this.

By the way, did I mention that I am having absolutely no problems with using a single ATA drive to playback 40+ tracks with heavy edits? I work on a couple of other rigs with SCSI drives and I am used drumming fingers before playback with anything record enabled, and random jerky redraws, and I am having none of that on this system. But that is another issue.

[ July 30, 2001: Message edited by: patchboy ]