Anyone had intermittent problems with Pulsar II V3.x and dirty / faulty optical cables. I changed one of the cables between my Fostex VC8 and Pulsar for a new one after the card started behaving eratically. Unable to communicate and dsp overload errors etc for no apparent reason.
Is this normal ?
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: topbanana on 2001-12-20 05:39 ]</font>
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: topbanana on 2001-12-20 07:15 ]</font>
Dodgy Optics
It gets better !!!
Re-installed the Pulsar lot and:-
I can consistently get the Word Clock to go tits up. Just re-boot and open sample rate setiings and there it is claiming its got no word clock even though its the master. Easy fix though just unplug the fibre, count to ten and plug it back in. Hey presto word clock re-appears and all is fine.
When in "where the hell is the word clock mode" Pulsar is all over the place, slow eratic error messages, no ASIO, comms failure etc etc.
Is this normal ?
TA & Merry Xmas
TB
Re-installed the Pulsar lot and:-
I can consistently get the Word Clock to go tits up. Just re-boot and open sample rate setiings and there it is claiming its got no word clock even though its the master. Easy fix though just unplug the fibre, count to ten and plug it back in. Hey presto word clock re-appears and all is fine.
When in "where the hell is the word clock mode" Pulsar is all over the place, slow eratic error messages, no ASIO, comms failure etc etc.
Is this normal ?
TA & Merry Xmas
TB
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algorhythm
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have you synced the VC8 to anything else before? have you tried syncing pulsar to another machine besides the VC8?
Master/Slave settings fine? same samplerate? does pulsar work fine as word clock master with nothing hooked up?
the cables are fine? your sure?
that should troubleshoot a bit and narrow the problem down . . .
Master/Slave settings fine? same samplerate? does pulsar work fine as word clock master with nothing hooked up?
the cables are fine? your sure?
that should troubleshoot a bit and narrow the problem down . . .
More help required please ......
I cant make head nor tail of this. Totaly removed all cables from Pulsar (optical & multicore loom) set it to Master sync and still it sugests that its getting a signal from spdif. Tried all combinations of mulitcore fibre on adat 1 and 2 and still no really consistent stability.
Sometimes after 5 minutes of cable swapping Pulsar wakes up and becomes master other times it gets stuck with spdif detected clock. Then all of a sudden both spdif and adat, then no spdif just adat (as it should be) and all is ok.
The spdif word clock detect worries me a bit (even though the cable is unattached) and it seems as though this might be throwing it.
Help !!!!!
Thanks
TB
I cant make head nor tail of this. Totaly removed all cables from Pulsar (optical & multicore loom) set it to Master sync and still it sugests that its getting a signal from spdif. Tried all combinations of mulitcore fibre on adat 1 and 2 and still no really consistent stability.
Sometimes after 5 minutes of cable swapping Pulsar wakes up and becomes master other times it gets stuck with spdif detected clock. Then all of a sudden both spdif and adat, then no spdif just adat (as it should be) and all is ok.
The spdif word clock detect worries me a bit (even though the cable is unattached) and it seems as though this might be throwing it.
Help !!!!!
Thanks
TB
No it's not a well known fault since you're the first time I've seen a problem like that. 
But it is important to understand the basics of a digital system and a digital clock in a system.
1. You need to have only have ONE digital clock in a digital system.
2. Some devices REQUIRE themselves to be "Master" if connected in a digital way (SPDIF, ADAT, AESEBU, etc). Particularly synths with digital outs -- they don't want their synth engine "Slaving" to an external source. If you have such a device on the system which "forces" itself to "MASTER" then of course your Creamware cards will succumb to it's dominance.
3. When troubleshooting a clocking issue, start with your Creamware cards and ONE device. Get the master/slave relationship worked out so that it's reliable and working properly with audio. THEN add another device.
4. You might want to check the manuals for your other digital devices, and see what kind of limitations they have. Do they require themselves to be digital master? Do they only work at 48Khz? Etc.
Hope that helps. Remember if you're doing this professionally, just get the Creamware WordClock plate (and provided your other digital gear all has wordclock) connect it with the WordClock plate and be done with clocking nightmares forever.
But yeah... dirty or melted optical cables can cause clocking issues. Use clean, high quality optical cables.
But it is important to understand the basics of a digital system and a digital clock in a system.
1. You need to have only have ONE digital clock in a digital system.
2. Some devices REQUIRE themselves to be "Master" if connected in a digital way (SPDIF, ADAT, AESEBU, etc). Particularly synths with digital outs -- they don't want their synth engine "Slaving" to an external source. If you have such a device on the system which "forces" itself to "MASTER" then of course your Creamware cards will succumb to it's dominance.
3. When troubleshooting a clocking issue, start with your Creamware cards and ONE device. Get the master/slave relationship worked out so that it's reliable and working properly with audio. THEN add another device.
4. You might want to check the manuals for your other digital devices, and see what kind of limitations they have. Do they require themselves to be digital master? Do they only work at 48Khz? Etc.
Hope that helps. Remember if you're doing this professionally, just get the Creamware WordClock plate (and provided your other digital gear all has wordclock) connect it with the WordClock plate and be done with clocking nightmares forever.
But yeah... dirty or melted optical cables can cause clocking issues. Use clean, high quality optical cables.
Euh... he's got 'sync in' signals when nothing is connected. That's a damaged card or faulty installation or bad drivers.
Not? How else can Pulsar say it's receiving SPDIF/ADAT sync when nothing is hooked up?? There ight be any form of 'noise' on the inputs, still that will not let Pulsar detect that as a 'sync in'!!
I think the problem is PFM
Not? How else can Pulsar say it's receiving SPDIF/ADAT sync when nothing is hooked up?? There ight be any form of 'noise' on the inputs, still that will not let Pulsar detect that as a 'sync in'!!
I think the problem is PFM
That's not normal!! Did you change *anything* else in between 'working cards' and 'error'? From software or so? Seems your card is on it's own trip,On 2001-12-20 05:37, topbanana wrote:
Anyone had intermittent problems with Pulsar II V3.x and dirty / faulty optical cables. I changed one of the cables between my Fostex VC8 and Pulsar for a new one after the card started behaving eratically. Unable to communicate and dsp overload errors etc for no apparent reason.
Is this normal ?
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: topbanana on several occasions]</font>
the atom.
Thanks chaps,
So:-
1)Spdif has nothing connected
2)Nothing changed on the software front
I'm pretty sure now its the card cause when I put light pressure to the side of the multicore connector the spdif clock signal disappears from spdif and appears correctly on adat. The card then works fine for a while.
My next worry is that its just over a year old and presumably out of warranty. Where do I stand with Creamware / my dealer ?
Sub - thanks for the explanation of Word Clock.
TB
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: topbanana on 2001-12-29 01:39 ]</font>
So:-
1)Spdif has nothing connected
2)Nothing changed on the software front
I'm pretty sure now its the card cause when I put light pressure to the side of the multicore connector the spdif clock signal disappears from spdif and appears correctly on adat. The card then works fine for a while.
My next worry is that its just over a year old and presumably out of warranty. Where do I stand with Creamware / my dealer ?
Sub - thanks for the explanation of Word Clock.
TB
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: topbanana on 2001-12-29 01:39 ]</font>
Well I finally sorted the problem out and to help others I'm posting this:-
Intermittent clock issues with Pulsar II and V3.x software on A7M 266 mobo and WIN98 and ASIO Drivers cause Cubase to crash
==============================================================================================
When displaying the sample rate / settings window Pulsar would flip between clock input on SPDIF and ADAT A. Then it would stop and stick on SPDIF even though I had and never had anything connected to SPDIF and Pulsar set to clock master.
I found that if I applied light sideways pressure to the multicore connector at the back of the Pulsar card it would flip clock source some more and just enough push would set it back to ADAT. All would be fine till I powered up next day to use it and it would revert back to flipping between SPDIF & ADAT.
All this really, really, really screwed Cubase 5.x up to the extent that sometimes I had to hardware reset the PC to get it back to life.
Not wanting to unrack the PC, dismantle it and have a poke around I left it like this for a while and discovered that lightly twisting the PC case also fixed the problem.
So it was down to the card having very slightly poor contact with the connectors in the PCI slot so twisting / pushing the connector improved this. The card was fixed firmly and correctly in its slot and looked to perfectly fine. After removing it and cleaning the contacts everything works fine again.
Hope this is helpful to others as it would have saved me a lot of time.
TB
Intermittent clock issues with Pulsar II and V3.x software on A7M 266 mobo and WIN98 and ASIO Drivers cause Cubase to crash
==============================================================================================
When displaying the sample rate / settings window Pulsar would flip between clock input on SPDIF and ADAT A. Then it would stop and stick on SPDIF even though I had and never had anything connected to SPDIF and Pulsar set to clock master.
I found that if I applied light sideways pressure to the multicore connector at the back of the Pulsar card it would flip clock source some more and just enough push would set it back to ADAT. All would be fine till I powered up next day to use it and it would revert back to flipping between SPDIF & ADAT.
All this really, really, really screwed Cubase 5.x up to the extent that sometimes I had to hardware reset the PC to get it back to life.
Not wanting to unrack the PC, dismantle it and have a poke around I left it like this for a while and discovered that lightly twisting the PC case also fixed the problem.
So it was down to the card having very slightly poor contact with the connectors in the PCI slot so twisting / pushing the connector improved this. The card was fixed firmly and correctly in its slot and looked to perfectly fine. After removing it and cleaning the contacts everything works fine again.
Hope this is helpful to others as it would have saved me a lot of time.
TB