PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

This is my problem. I'm running an old 2* Pulsar I -setup with 2.4 Ghz P4 (845pe max2 SFIR -chipset) and Windows xp sp3. The machine has had these cards for aeons. Now, after a break I'm in need to get this working as I need to transform stuff from HD24XR.

The windows install is about as clean as it can be. I also took the time to do the optimizations for audio pc:S as described on http://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/art ... s-updated/

When idling, the processor shows 99% on idle process. This is when I have shut down te SFP. When it's on, it's constantly pumping from around 30% to 100% for SFP. It has something to do with the clock, as the window with clock source settings keeps blinking the samplerate. This happens regardless of having the lightpipes connected or not. When I plug the lightpipes in, the lights for them light up and stay on without glitches. I can also select clock sources and set the clock to master or slave. When the readout of the selected samplerate shows up, it is correct, regardless of the master. But it drops out almost immediately.

A real curious thing is that the setup worked flawlessly for a brief moment two days ago. When it did, it did so until I closed the computer (I saved the changes for the default project before I did). The next time it was back to it's erroneous ways.

Software is 4.0. By searching through the boards for some light to my solution I came to an impression one can download 4.5 for free nowadays. Is this true? If it is, why is it that I can't download it from soniccore's ftp-server? I see the package but when trying to load it it gaves an error immediately. Seems also be that way with every other package in there. I tried with Firefox and IE.

Any help warmly appreciated!

v4 and v4.5 are identical. the plugin packages were different.

try turning off automatic updates in windows. there was a recent update that made xp painfully slow while automatic updates was enabled.

what is the card(s) sharing an irq with?

the issue with clock is more serious.
if the samplerate will not lock when the Scope is master, there is a broken card. actually, it's probably a bad i/o daughtercard. turn off the computer and remove a card. restart the computer and see if the problem is fixed. if the problem is not fixed, turn off the computer and replace the first card and remove another. at some point you should be able to figure out which card isn't working. another option would be to try one card at a time. i don't think a clock issue would cause a big cpu load, but if the sequencer was open or if the right plugin is loaded, it might.

Thanks, Garyb!

I check the automatic updates. I think I turned them off when I removed the network card from the system, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

Also, I need to start checking if the cards are faulty. Too bad I have them soldered together (TDM). But I can undo that and do it again if it doesn't do anything.

The cards are both at irq17. Nothing else on that irq.

To add to the last one, there is no daughtercards as both the cards are pulsar mk1:s.

And here we go... I removed the other card and it's working as it's supposed to.

The bummer here is that now I have 16 adat channels i/o and 24 channel hd recorder.

The saga continues. Now the remaining card locks to external & internal sync ok and the computer records 16 channels of audio simultaneously. The problem now is garbled playback.

I'm using Reaper as a DAW, and am quite new with it (but not DAW:s in general). Is there any specific gotchas I should be aware with Reaper? It almost sounds like it's playing on a wrong samplerate. The rate was set at 48000 in project settings before capture and 48k at Ulli. HD24 was the clock source during capture, and I changed the computer as clocksource before starting playback.

Processor load seems quite tolerable on record & playback. On record it peaks at around 70%, but on playback it stays in the 30% region steadily. This is afterall 16 tracks in at 48k/24bits with a p4 computer running WinXp.

Is there something I'm missing?

probably, but i'm not sure what it is.

you could post a clip of the garbled audio. it's clean when monitored on the cards(before recording) right?

Consider this solved.

The audio playback problems got sorted once I changed the audio disk from system disk to my... well, audiodisk.

Reaper handled poor disk performance really weirdly. What lead me to the right track was when I decided to try Sonar instead. There the symptoms of insufficient disk throughtput were more along the lines of what should be expected.

So, if it seems that Reaper is playing on a wrong samplerate, check the disk it's using.

To sumarize (I try to help the next ones by typing something that can come up in search results): If a scope card is not locking to sync and flashing the adat lights, there is a possibility the card itself is faulty. If Reaper samplerate seems to be wrong, one possible reason is poor disk performance. Two separate problems, two separate remedies.