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I have an A16 ultra w/ Pulsar II and Luna II. I'm running Pentium 4 2.4mhz w/ 1gig of ram on XP OS. it seems like everytime a sound goes through my A16 that i hear some noise come in with the sound, but its not constent. its almost like a noise gate or something along those lines. Does anyone have any suggestions or is that a normal thing?

That's not normal.

Does it happen on all the channels? Or just a specific channel / pair of channels?

If you're using Z-Link, those firewire cables can come loose fairly easily and cause lots of noise when they lose contact. Might be worth making sure the cables are tight in their sockets.

Are you sure the noise is coming from the A16 Ultra, and not some of your analog gear (synths, amps, mics, whatever)?

Cheers,

Johann

check all the analog cables too.

also, could it be a motor noise, like when accessing the hard drive?

R

It happens on all channels, and only when sound comes through the A16 regardless weather it be a synth, mic or guitar. When I use the ins and outs of either sound card it happens aswell but at a tolerable level, after post processing it gets rid of the noise. could it be an energy problem such as having many items pluged in to a a power strip with no power regulation?

PS I am using Z-link

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Ton:e on 2004-11-05 18:05 ]</font>

do you have a sophisticated graphics card ?
a P4, graphcard, 2 DSP boards and a couple of HDs could push a 'regular' PSU to it's limit's.

Do you use the A16U for monitor out with non-symmetric cables ?
afaik there's a protection (opposed to the original A16) against short-circuiting the outs - could be that it's 'reaction' is reflected somehow in the noise you experience.
pray that it's not a ground-loop...

cheers, Tom

i definitely have a "regular" PSU. I've done nothing to the PC to upgrade it, can you make recomendations to beef up my PC. And I do not use it for monitor out purposes i run my main out through one of my sound cards. Can you recommend a better way to route things, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

On 2004-11-05 18:04, Ton:e wrote:
It happens on all channels, and only when sound comes through the A16 regardless weather it be a synth, mic or guitar. When I use the ins and outs of either sound card it happens aswell but at a tolerable level...
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Ton:e on 2004-11-05 18:05 ]</font>

Do you use a mixer to input the synths, guitar, mic, etc., or do you plug all your instruments straight into the A16?
R

On 2004-11-05 13:44, Ton:e wrote:
... it seems like everytime a sound goes through my A16 that i hear some noise come in with the sound, but its not constent. its almost like a noise gate or something along those lines.

When you say that the noise is not constant; do you mean that it varies in level each time a note is played, or do you mean that it is not always there every time you play a note?

Other ideas:

Does it happen when you turn your computer monitor off?

What equipment is your A16 sitting on or beside?

You say the same thing happens on the other soundcard but not as much? what do you mean that it goes away post processing...processing with what exactly?

R
R

how about posting a soundfile(example) of the noise?

that's certainly the best idea.

but to isolate the problem just disconnect the A16U. If the card's inputs deliver the same sound, just at a lower intensity, then it's definetely not the external box.

my original comment was related to the description of the sound. If something is short circuited (or overloaded) then it often sounds similiar to a gate.
the FW cable of the A16U could be bad - and there's a powerline inside which might be damaged, but thats just a guess - and not very likely if one looks at such a cable, but who knows ?

cheers, Tom

I don't use an external mixer between my synths and the A16 ultra, what I mean by not constant is that I don't hear the noise that I'm concerned with all of the time only when sound travels through my system.
I will try to post a sample of the sound sometime this week.
What I mean by post processing is that I can muffle the noise by noise reduction but I would prefer not to have to do that.
Astroman, can I get some suggestions on beefing up my PC, even if thats not the problem I would like to cover all basis. In the mean time I will try all of the suggestions you all have provided, thanks again.

Mad Respect,
Ton:e

On 2004-11-08 12:06, Ton:e wrote:
...Astroman, can I get some suggestions on beefing up my PC, even if thats not the problem I would like to cover all basis. ...

well, I'm definetely the wrong person to ask...
I could tell you how to sheep it down, though

There IS some advantage for native processing with the latest and greatest machines, IF the app is optimized for the CPU.
But how to tell ?
You'd have to disassemble the code (forbidden btw) and browse through hundreds of pages (if you are able to identify the important stuff), otherwise such programs flood you with millions (!) of pages - of nonsense...
A single kilobyte of object code (that's what the CPU executes) unfolds to roughly 100 pages of assembly source.

Current Pentium or AMD CPUs are totally uneffective with 'regular applications', considering the amount of technology and energy burnt for a given result.

That's why I stick with fairly old stuff, Celerons, Pentium III (Tualatin preferably) in the range of 1-1.5 GHZ, running Win98.
It's a sh*tty OS, but gives a reliable home for SFP.

I prefer the SFP sound processing (very few native stuff) and I don't need a sequencer (I have VDAT and I make my living as a consultant, not from music production).
Of corse in a strictly commercial environment one cannot afford to ignore Cubase or Logic for the simple fact of workflow and data exchange, but I'm not in that position.

I have the Win98 installation mostly for the purpose to HAVE any Windows at all - otherwise I'd ignore it completely for it's stupidity, but that would weaken my business position.
I must be able to talk about (and deal with) that stuff from time to time...

My preferred system would be a Mac G4 (400-800MHZ) running cool and quiet and rock solid under MacOS-9.
Just one example: a re-installation of the complete Mac system takes no more than 15 minutes WITHOUT any pre-requisites like stored images or alike...

which doesn't apply to OSX btw - which would take the usual hours just as in the PCee world - but for business sake I'll have an OSX installation, too - in the near future. There's an aweful lot of money to make by clueless Mac users...

I currently have a programming project (developed on a Cel 1G) that will be transferred to a P4 soon.

The software will be depending on nothing but Ram and the CPU, so it's an ideal setup to compare both systems - but it has nothing to do with music, it's the database backend of a web application.

drifted a bit from the topic, sorry - the bottom line is simple:
check your needs and buy what's appropriate - on eBay if out of stores elsewhere, like those nice PIII servers in 19 inch boxes...
and yes, for reliability (and noise) I prefer harddisks with 5400 rpm - I don't have 128 tracks to be recorded at once

cheers, Tom

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: astroman on 2004-11-08 16:48 ]</font>