96 i/o crackles

[aerecording]

I'm having issues with my 96 i/o. It's crackling every 30 seconds.
When a session is loaded I get the error "a Timeout occurred interfacing with an audio interface"

Sometimes the Aurora and the 96 have different samples rates in a session.
When the sync is changes it is greyed out.
another time the playback was really slow.

My system... Mac 8 core, 10.6.7 HD accel 2

[JFreak]

I think you have a bad DigiLink cable between card and interface

[albee1952]

Is this a new issue with a system that has been fine, or has the setup never worked well? If its the latter, I also suspect the digilink cable or your clocking.

[aerecording]

it was working fine for a few years

[JFreak]

It's most likely a cable problem. Now if you don't have spares, you could first buy new wordclock cables because those are cheaper. If replacing wordclock cables fixes your issue, fine. But in case new wordclock cables don't work I'm most certain it is the DigiLink cable.

[JFreak]

Also, take a look at the manuals. You might need wordclock termination, or press a button somewhere.

[aerecording]

thanks for the replies! Problem solved. I think the pci card wasn't seated properly.
Working ok now

[aerecording]

it worked for 4 hours and started again. will try the digilink cable

[aerecording]

I swapped digilink cable but am having same issues

[JFreak]

Okay, but to me it still seems to be a cable problem. Or something is broken, but let us assume we can fix it.

Now you did say you have a HD2, didn't you? Try removing the 2nd card (and re-seat the core card to be sure it has a good connection to the computer) and use your system as HD1 for a while -- see if the problem goes away or stays.

If it goes away, you have a broken or badly seated ribbon cable between cards, or badly seated 2nd card. So in this case, re-seat 2nd card and the ribbon cable and double-check that the connections are perfect. Then test again. If the problem keeps away, you have fixed the issue but if it comes back and you're sure about the connections, then you have a bad ribbon cable.

The tricky part is if the problem stays while you only use one card. Having replaced the DigiLink cable already, we have two possibilities:

1) DigiLink connector on the 96 interface is broken
2) Clocking is not functioning properly

Checking the first one should be easy; remove the Aurora from the equation. Only use the HD1 + 96interface combination with the new DigiLink cable. There are no other cables in the system, only the new DigiLink cable between card and interface. If the problem goes away for good, we can assume that the connector is fine.

And then we can go back to post #5 and replacing wordclock cables...