Suddenly getting PCI Master Overflow

[Spindrift]

I already concluded that it doesn't happen with the speaker disconnected, and it "solved" the issue reversing the main plug for that speaker. But if they share the "ground" (which is not connected to earth but just going between the equipment in the splitter) turning off the speaker causes scope to error.

As far as the purpose of the tread it is pretty much resolved. There is nothing wrong with my Xite, probably something wrong with my speakers, and I should get ground installed in my studio asap. And it seems to be no real safety concern, neither for me of the devices to run them without ground meanwhile.

Also, Tannoy got back to me on a Sunday! Almost as impressive CS as S|C!

Basically they said ground has to be connected for safety reasons. I then asked why my Reveals had the double isolation symbol that should mean it is a class II appliance not requiring ground to be considered safe and asked if it can harm the speakers and invalidate warranty to use them without ground. They replied that using ground is not required, but recommended, and warranty is only invalidated if you don't use it in accordance with the local jurisdictions regulations.
So as I understand, they don't think it will cause the speakers harm, and since a class II device does not have to be connected to ground in Sweden, it is not invalidating warranty.

It is interesting how this subject has many passionate but differing views in different countries. Sweden is quite safety minded in general, but when you read discussions on this matter people don't seem to think it is much of an issue not having ground in a dry room. For example in the US it seems like often even discussing not having ground is like killing a kitten
Can be partly due to differences in other parts of the system, for example I don't know how standard it is with GFI in the US, but here in Sweden you have to have it and has been fitted pretty much everywhere since it is easy to add to any system, old or new.
And the fact is that there are very few incidents due to ungrounded systems. They happen when people mix grounded with ungrounded.

[t_tangent]

Btw, in regards to the speakers popping when turning things off. I would not drive speakers without something between my soundcard and them. Passive or active, mixer or just monitor controller, the cost of fixing the speakers even once is offset by investing in something suitable. $300 speakers deserve any small format mixer you can find, $14,000 mains probably need something suitable (weakest link & all that). Recommended.

Yes, def worth investing in something that does this.

I use a Goldpoint SA1X, and simply turn to 0 before I power down everything else.

https://goldpt.com/sa1x.html

This sits between Scope outputs and monitor inputs. Was a worthwhile purchase which I only found out about the hard way some years back when I blew my monitor tweeters after I forgot Scope mixer was set to max level.

[garyb]

because i somehow misposted this earlier, i am just reposting it under my name, correctly.....

Sinking a wire into the ground to connect to earth can be dangerous for several reasons. If you really know what your doing it can be safe, but noone that does will do it because it will definitely leave you liable if anything happens I Sweden since there are many ways it can go wrong.

This house is 150 years old, so is no wiring in tubes. It means tearing upp wallpaper and stuff in a couple of rooms to pull new wires from the central. Will cost thousands of € to get professionals to do it. I think it might be worth doing but it will not be cheap or easy.

if your wiring is not in conduit, it is so dangerous, that it's not even worth discussing. conduit help keep mice from eating the insulation and starting fires. my home is 130 years old, so whatever. my previous home was 125 years old. my current house has conduit, the previous house had some conduit. even still, that is what fishtape is for. there is no reason to tear open the walls, normally. you only need one properly grounded outlet for your studio, although more would be better. you could even run the ground on the outside, and enter the building through a tiny hole. this is not rocket science.

what kind of crooks operate in Sweden? thousands of euros is what a guy who is taking advantage of his client's ignorance charges.

also, CONTACT AN ELECTRICIAN! an estimate should be free. since you have grounded plugs, SOMETHING in your wiring has already been updated.

lastly, how in the hell do you think the house would be grounded? it is ALWAYS a rod stuck into the ground. then a wire is clamped to the rod and the other end of the wire connects to the ground bus in the breaker box(normally). of course, that should be done by someone who knows what they are doing.

[valis]

It is interesting how this subject has many passionate but differing views in different countries. Sweden is quite safety minded in general, but when you read discussions on this matter people don't seem to think it is much of an issue not having ground in a dry room. For example in the US it seems like often even discussing not having ground is like killing a kitten
Can be partly due to differences in other parts of the system, for example I don't know how standard it is with GFI in the US, but here in Sweden you have to have it and has been fitted pretty much everywhere since it is easy to add to any system, old or new.
And the fact is that there are very few incidents due to ungrounded systems. They happen when people mix grounded with ungrounded.

In my case the issues were twofold: high noise floor and USB related disconnects. USB3 gear doesn't seem as sensitive, so I have always presumed this was due to low current devices and poor shielding on many USB ports (hub or end device). This might be why it affects noise floor more in US as well, at 120V potential is half, but the differential might potentially be twice as severe. Since I haven't experienced 240V for anything other than large appliances or live PA, I can't really comment further on that.

We are however skilled on these forums at drilling into minutiae and turning it into a heated discussion, aren't we.

[Spindrift]

@gary
Good examples of the cultural differences in the US. In new buildings in Sweden we pull wires in tubes, but in old buildings I have never seen it. We pull it along the walls. And often it ends up under the wallpaper.
So actually pulling new wires is not what is costly and a lot of work, it is making sure everything is restored cosmetically after.

And in Sweden the house owner is not responsible for securing a ground connection. The electricity company handles that and pulls it in to main power inlet in the house.
Using a ground rod here is considered a dangerous hack, since it can mean adding another potential considering there always already exists a supplied ground somewhere in the system.

[garyb]

pulling wires does not require opening the walls, usually.

are you saying the the lines are grounded from the central power office? no. there is an earthing rod for the building, or should be. i looked up the Swedish regulations.

[valis]

For my space, the conduit passes through a window that is permanently sealed as it's an easy egress for those with an opportunistic mindset. Running through the wall from the powerbox to the outside of the house and then the window took no cutting, the properly equipped professional usually has snakes, pull wires/strings and telescopic camera equipment at their disposal. In my case, he had to come back a few hours later with it, but the job was quickly done. Sealing the conduit as it passes through the upper wall and/or underhang for the roof isn't hard, nor was the window. We do that to keep bugs out, and of course how you seal within the wall, at the top, and outside might affect fire code. There wasn't much required in this case, as it's already there and we just have to close any holes created inside the wall (or at the top).

I did no alterations to my space, and the only changes in the power box were to put all household appliance rooms that matter on one side of our box, and my studio and bedrooms on the other phase. I've done this in my last 3 houses and it simplifies setup later, so I prefer to do it moving in now. When done, I have 2 breakers for my space, one drives an in-window a/c and lighting etc, the other the gear. My power is distributed in a manner similar to those outlined in that link provided earlier.

I mean, we're creative people. That doesn't mean we're suggesting anyone break code or roll DIY power solutions. I can't really stop you from doing that either, but it took about an afternoon to wire my space and the rest of the week to setup my gear and sound proofing.

[Spindrift]

pulling wires does not require opening the walls, usually.

are you saying the the lines are grounded from the central power office? no. there is an earthing rod for the building, or should be. i looked up the Swedish regulations.

Like I said, cables run outside the walls. There is no opening of walls possible, they are solid.

Lines are grounded coming in to the house yes. I think they ground it at transformation stations. Anyway, never seen a single house with it's own ground rod, and it is definitely not part of regulation here.

[garyb]

if the cables are outside the walls, then it's even easier.
if they are outside, they must be in conduit. it is madness to have unprotected wires on the outside.

nope, not grounded at the transformer. that is not intelligent.

if there is no opening of the walls, why would the wallpaper be ruined?

anyway, it is no matter to me how things are in your place, or what you want to do about it. truly, it's not my business, and i'm not losing sleep over it. whatever works is perfectly fine by me. obviously, the problem is minor for you.

[Spindrift]

Just explaining how it is here. In our defense we cannot be getting it that wrong, We might have crazy wiring in your eyes, but the US has like 15 times more deaths from electrocution per capita compared to Sweden ;P

[valis]

Cool, so you win?

I think the issue here was PCI overflow messages with Xite. I do hope that we've been of some help in resolving that, and wish you the best in figuring the rest of this out on your own.

[nebelfuerst]

From an EE perspective:
In germany, a house is connected as a 3 phase + neutral wiring, thus 4 cables. Ground is provided by metal water tubes or some metal outside the basement. At some point neutral and ground are connected.
The 3 phases are split into different rooms, so one room typically uses just one phase. This should balance the load, at large scale.
Unfortunately, computer equipement is often just in one room and uses switching powersupplies, some of the with pretty bad designs.
On neutral, you end up with a slight, pulsating lift in voltage, compared to ground.
(Some older installations just use 2 wires, so "ground" of your device is actually neutral, as it is connected in the socket.)
The startup of a switching powersupply can show an very high inrush current, which can produce significant voltage on neutral.

Some audio devices seem to connect audio ground to powersupply ground, which is the first step for ground loops.
Xite itself doen't get ground from its powersupply, but in a rackmount, the case gets grounded by some other devices, maybe.
There is always a link from Xite to PC, which might have ground connects on both sides. ( don't know myself)
In my setup, Xite is 6m apart from the PC and switching on some halogen spotlights managed to produce a magnetic pulse, which caused Xite to show copyright error. (So I deinstalled that EMP-weapon and got back to 230V bulps

Using isolating transformers and keeping grounded devices close together, powering them from the same socket can help sometimes.
As switching powersupplies feed high frequency signals back into you powersupply installation, making them act as a transmitting antenna, filters might also be an idea.

[valis]

I use sine-wave converting UPS's now on all PC's. Lesser machines get the Cyberpower stuff as it's not bad now, and APC still goes on the rigs over 800W just because I know those batteries will age better (and are larger). Seems to help not only the PSU's in the computers self-regulate, but also keeps them isolated from line conditions and vice versa. I also have some simple transformer based units that will adjust voltage with dips & peaks that come before all UPS's as I noticed that the UPS's tend to adjust in steps of 2-3V and this unit does it in steps of 7V, which means a -15V condition (most 120V gear will still work at just under 110V but it increases power supply control issues), and has seemed to increase the lifespan of my power supplies overall (and my UPS's). This was more to protect gear against the neighborhood's power problems and ensure longevity than it had to do with noise, but it's still good to note the overall picture.

Thanks for the informative post nebelfuerst

[Spindrift]

Sorry Valid, not a competition, just defending the Swedes a bit against accusations that the way we deal with electricity is mad and unintelligent

Very interesting neblefuerst!
So you got the copyright protection error as well...I assume it was with a grounded system?
In that case maybe getting ground drawn in will not fix the issue, and speakers are completely to blame.

[valis]

If you read his description, you'll note that he's discussing how gear is impacting a situation where the reference (neutral) has an offset. This is what the 'ground lift' on gear is intended to help with (that or just a plain old dirty ground). This is also why in my 2-phase I put the heavy appliances on one side, and my workspace and our bedrooms on the other. I pull 50A with everything running full bore, one of my machines even has dual power supplies (750W & 960W). Though I am very happy to reduce my thermal and power bill footprint at every opportunity and move away from machines that output heat like vacuum cleaners, I also have to weigh the cost:benefit proposition for swapping out an old machine vs. building a new machine and at what point that recoups...meanwhile these machines support my family and household as well as my business.

Anyway, when it comes to your situation it's unfortunately not as simple as 'this is the problem' as soon as you find a piece of gear that effects a change when you power cycle it. The gear is connected together to your power source(s) as a system, and you need to walk the chain to troubleshoot. We have discussed several points in the chain, but none of us are in your space to figure things out, so we're simply touching on each point as it comes up. At no point has anyone said they know what's going on with your gear, that's for you to figure out as you're the one with access. All we can do is discuss things with you as you go, which is what we've done.

[garyb]

electricity is pretty much the same everywhere. it knows no tribal preferences.

AC is AC. there haven't been significant transmission improvements since Tesla vs Edison. Sweden works the same way as the rest of the world, more or less.

Spindrift, your speakers are not to "blame". grounding schemes possibly are, but that is easily remedied with wiring, groundlifts or both. just be sure that something in the connected series of devices have a good ground. that's part of the purpose of balanced audio connections. because grounding schemes from one device to another are different and there is no standard, on some devices audio and chassis ground are the same, on others they are not the same. this is where groundloops occur.

Spindrift, if you think i was making fun of Sweden, then either you need english lessons or i need to learn to write in Swedish(well, i'm too lazy). as i said, i got online and read the Swedish electrical regulations(english pdf). there is nothing extraordinary going on there regulation-wise, except for the attempt to scare off ignorant consumers from learning how diy works. i get it. you don't want to discover what is going on in your house wiring and you definitely don't want to see if you can fix any actual problems.

the "copy protection error" is really nothing. it only indicates that the software has lost contact with the XITE(or card). this could be from a power problem, or user error(for example, turning the XITE on and off) or a computer problem. it could be that "reset board if idle" is checked in the device manager, and the computer is disabling the XITE's connection when it thinks you aren't using it(very possible), or it could be a damaged motherboard(very unlikely).

[garyb]

If you read his description, you'll note that he's discussing how gear is impacting a situation where the reference (neutral) has an offset. This is what the 'ground lift' on gear is intended to help with (that or just a plain old dirty ground). This is also why in my 2-phase I put the heavy appliances on one side, and my workspace and our bedrooms on the other. I pull 50A with everything running full bore, one of my machines even has dual power supplies (750W & 960W). Though I am very happy to reduce my thermal and power bill footprint at every opportunity and move away from machines that output heat like vacuum cleaners, I also have to weigh the cost:benefit proposition for swapping out an old machine vs. building a new machine and at what point that recoups...meanwhile these machines support my family and household as well as my business.

Anyway, when it comes to your situation it's unfortunately not as simple as 'this is the problem' as soon as you find a piece of gear that effects a change when you power cycle it. The gear is connected together to your power source(s) as a system, and you need to walk the chain to troubleshoot. We have discussed several points in the chain, but none of us are in your space to figure things out, so we're simply touching on each point as it comes up. At no point has anyone said they know what's going on with your gear, that's for you to figure out as you're the one with access. All we can do is discuss things with you as you go, which is what we've done.

yes.

[fra77x2]

Gary and Valis you definitely need some vacation guys. You seem to have burn some lamps in there

[valis]

Finally we agree on something

[fra77x2]

Planetz the ultimate site for humour

For years we had the great motherboard joke:

innocent user: I would like to use scope, what computer should I get?

Gary: You will need to hire a committee of 7 motherboard technicians and 3 motherboard designers accompanied by their mothers. Only then you will be able to run scope flawesly.

innocent user: Ok.


But after many years this joke got old...
And we have reached a totally new level of humour:

innocent user: I turned off my speakers and I got a message in the computer. It says "PCI oveflow"

Gary: Well let me think, you have to rebuild your house.

innocent user: Ok, it will take me some time because it costs a lot.

Gary: Wait this is not all. Your country has to replace its electricity network

innocent user: Are you sure? It sounds a bit extreme.

Gary: Do you know who I am?

innocent user: Well, no?

Gary: Have you read the bible?

innocent user: Ok yes I will quickly send a message to my government