Unable to communicate with SYNC HD (24.3)

[John Merchant]

Thank you for that suggestion, Erik!

When mixing in Atmos and using the Dolby Audio Bridge as the playback engine, the Sync HD is unavailable. Switching to the HDX playback engine allowed the Sync HD to work as before.

Kind of a pain when relying on an external word clock, but good to know the Sync is still working.

[thierryd]

Nevermind: operator error. Somehow when reconnecting everything I connected the serial cables to the 2nd HDX card instead of the first. Because the Sonnet is mounted vertically and the cards in the MacPro5,1 horizontally I misinterpret the order. Digitest can update firmware on both slots, but ProTools only recognises the first card to communicate with SYNC peripehrals.
I'll leave my question, should somebody run into the same issue in the future. If somebody know the answers to my other Sync firmware questions below, please let us know.
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I'm running into this "Unable to commnunicate with Sync" and "Unable to commnunicate with Sync X" (and "Be sure that your Sync is turned on and connected" at the moment with a Sync HD and Syn X.


I was running 2 HDX2 systems on MacPro 5,1 Mojave 10.14.6 with a Sync X on one and Sync HD on the other MacPro5,1 (same OS) with PT2021.12 on both systems succesfully for years (never change a winning team


Now I finally moved a MacStudio M1 Ultra (running Ventura 13.7.4) from an editing setup to the studio with a Sonnet Echo III, exchanging one of the MacPro 5,1 computers.


Everything works except my Sync HD and X.


Things I tried:
Connected the serial cable to first HDX card and Sync HD and X respetively.
Digitest recognizes the Sync X, now connected to Mac Studio and Sync HD on MacPro 5,1


I've updated the Sync X firmware to the latest: SyncXFirmware_1_2_2_4.sy6
(I saw there's also a SyncXFirmware_1_2_1_5.sy6 in the firmware folder but didn't try that)
Sync HD was already on SYNCHDFirmware221.sy5, so I didn't change that)
(what is the SYNCHDFirmware221.syh in the firmware folder?)


Then started ProTools 2021.12 on MacPro and tried to enable the Sync HD (which used to be on the other MacPro5,1) in peripherals. No go "Unable to commnunicate with Sync X", so it must know for some reason that the Sync X used to be connected to this computer.


On the Mac Studio I tried to connect to Sync X with:
PT2023.12.1
PT2024.3.1
PT2024.10.2
"Unable to commnunicate with Sync"


Then I tried to connect the Sync X again to the MacPro5,1 where it used to be connected to (though with older firmware, does it matter?) and also no go, "Unable to commnunicate with Sync X"


I tried trashing prefs on the MacPro5,1, but that didn't help, still no communication with Sync.


So I went from 2 working HDX2 systems with Sync HD and X running, to 2 HDX system with Sync HD and X not working.


I probably am missing something obvious, but don't know what at the moment. Any insights? Thanks!


Greetings,
Thierry