hacking the creamware A16 ?

[nebelfuerst]

Owning a A8 and A16 and two scope, I'm still experiencing cracks .. sometimes after 5 hourse, sometimes directly after powerup.
Now I want to get rid of this.

I already checked the capacitors inside the A16, as the powercircuits get extremely hot.
As Adat is the connection of choise, I used an Adat-splitter to check if the cracks are send by the a16 or they are send to the a16.
Both effects can occur, but lately the sending to the a16 seems to be corrupted.

Question1
Is there a way to force scope to print some debugging about its input interfaces ?
Is there something like a way to analyse an adat-stream ?

As the A16 seems to work much better on 44.1, I'd like it to powerup at 44.1.
But it defaults to 48 after powerup.

Question 2
Is there a way to make the A16 default to 44.1 ?


Is there a site/documents of howto modify the A16 ?

[garyb]

is the A16 the master?
if not, then it should match the sample rate of the card it is connected to.

no, Scope won't spit out data. you can get hardware to monitor the stream, but it would be crazy expensive. there aren't any user hacks that can practically be made.

sounds like a master/slave issue.

you're using all 4 adat connections?

[krizrox]

This crackling problem never ends lol It's a shame there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution.

Is your A16 the original model with the fan? I have two A16 Ultras (one is a gray-face Creamware model and the other is a black-face S|C model). Aside from cosmetic differences, they are both functionally identical.

Both will remember the last settings used and default to that when turning on. This info probably isn't helpful to you if you have one of the earlier A16's. That might be a feature disadvantage of the original A16's.

Re crackling: Gary's suggestion of using the A16 as master clock seems to have solved my particular problem. I posted a couple of long-winded threads in the XITE section describing my journey to eliminate crackles/noise. But it was the purchase of a word-clock cable that solved my issues. I would definitely try that if you haven't already. Sadly, for others with newer Ferrofish A16s, it didn't seem to be a solution.

If you're going to try to isolate the problem to the A16, it might be easier and less involved to simply try it with another system (maybe a friend has a setup that you can just plop it in and see if it works). That would at least tell you if it's the A16 or something else. Good luck!

[garyb]

it's not that A16s never work. not at all.
there are 3 or 4 machines that seem to have this problem and all of them have found their way to PlanetZ.

i have used both the A16 Ultra and A16 Mk2 with both PCI cards and XITEs with ZERO problems.

[nebelfuerst]

I use the A16 as Master and as Slave.
Normally the A16 powers up as master/48khz. Most of the time this works "crack-free" for 4 hours.
If cracks show up, it sometimes helps to switch the A16 to slave.

I also used an external clockgenerator to drive the wordclock of the A16. The A16 and scope ( now being slave at adat) perfectly follow the clockgenerator.
But even in this case, the data, which goes from scope to A16 gets crackly, as I can seen in my echos attached to the A16.

As I have two identical PC connected with an Adat Splitter/Mux to the A16, I can determine the signalpath that is faulty.
( see picture attached)
The Adat-Splitter is not causing the problems, as they remain when removing the splitter.


I somehow suspect the effect of heat, that slowly increases over time in the A16 and PC..but I wasn't able to measure any bad signal yet..
I also had the same problems with the A8, but never with a fostex VC-8 ( which was fixed to 44.1khz).

[yayajohn]

Are these the units you are talking about? (A8 and A16)

or do you have the A16 Ultra? or Blackface Sonic Core A16U or newer Ferrofish A16 Ultra MkII?

[nebelfuerst]

yes. these blue items are right beside of me.

[Marco]

Crackles can be a result of bad light cable. Replace them! Your A16 is healthy again