profire 2626 in standalone mode

[John Murphy]

FWIW, I've never had an issue installing the MOTU 424 (x or e) drivers on my XP or Win7 machines. Install the (latest) drivers, shut down, install the card, start up and configure.

HTH,
Jeff

I will agree with that. I just did my first one tonight and it went very well.

So far all is going well. I only have one of the Profires hooked up for now. Doing a stress test with 2 channels of audio in and routed to 48 set to 2x32 It is running at 75% with no slipped buffers. 2x64 drops load down to 49%. Hope to bring in the amp rack tomorrow and get the rest hooked up and run some audio through more than just headphones.

[jlklein]

I will agree with that. I just did my first one tonight and it went very well.

So far all is going well. I only have one of the Profires hooked up for now. Doing a stress test with 2 channels of audio in and routed to 48 set to 2x32 It is running at 75% with no slipped buffers. 2x64 drops load down to 49%. Hope to bring in the amp rack tomorrow and get the rest hooked up and run some audio through more than just headphones.

I'll be watching for your results. I bought two Profires a couple months ago but haven't had time to really play with them yet. I got them for my portable system to augment/possibly replace the ART TubeOpto8s I have. No issues with the ARTs, just to reduce the weight and being a little cautious about tube preamps bouncing around in a rolling case. Plus the firewire backup might be handy.

Jeff

[John Murphy]

Ok so here is where I am now. After running all night maxed out I had no slipped buffers running at 80% load. So I got the amp rack in warmed up and hooked up, all the profires set, and a speaker hooked up and the snaps are back on the outputs (sound like popping bubble wrap). So after scratching my head for awhile I decided to take the Audiorails out of the chain and my snaps are now gone. So now what should I do. I sold my copper snakes along time ago. I am off to the Audiorail sight to see if I have something set wrong. These did work just fine with the ADA8000 before.

I do like the Motu set up, but it does take up a lot of rack space.

John

[John Murphy]

I think I have found the problem. According to Audiorail any unit that uses the jetpll clock is incompatible with Audiorails and the Profire 2626 uses the jetpll clock.
So now I have to decide what to do next. Replace the profires with something else, go back to a copper snake, or use SAC remote.

John

[jlklein]

I think I have found the problem. According to Audiorail any unit that uses the jetpll clock is incompatible with Audiorails and the Profire 2626 uses the jetpll clock.
So now I have to decide what to do next. Replace the profires with something else, go back to a copper snake, or use SAC remote.

John

Or...switch from Audiorails to Appsys. A search of Appsys' site shows that their 32 and 64 channel versions employ signal reconditioning and is not affected by the JetPLL issue (although their 8 channel version can be with certain products). There may be other brands as well, but Appsys is pretty well regarded in SAC circles.

It appears that while optical to electrical to optical conversion does degrade the ADAT signal somewhat, it is still within ADAT specs and will not cause adverse effects on products built to the Alesis standard. However, JetPLL is apparently much slower than the Alesis PLL design and causes issues.
(Ref: http://www.audiorail.com/DoNotUse.htm)

HTH,
Jeff

[John Murphy]

Or...switch from Audiorails to Appsys. A search of Appsys' site shows that their 32 and 64 channel versions employ signal reconditioning and is not affected by the JetPLL issue (although their 8 channel version can be with certain products). There may be other brands as well, but Appsys is pretty well regarded in SAC circles.

It appears that while optical to electrical to optical conversion does degrade the ADAT signal somewhat, it is still within ADAT specs and will not cause adverse effects on products built to the Alesis standard. However, JetPLL is apparently much slower than the Alesis PLL design and causes issues.
(Ref: http://www.audiorail.com/DoNotUse.htm)

HTH,
Jeff

Thanks Jeff. I am considering going that route. I emailed them to make sure that it will work for me. I don't want to go through all of that hassle and money just to find out that it has the same problem. I have a church install that wants to move the preamps to the stage and are using the ADA8000 which should work out great for them.

John

[RBIngraham]

Do the Profire's have Wordclock I/O? If so, you might just trying making one of your Profire's the master clock. Then clock the other Profire's to the Master Profire using the Wordclock I/O. Then lock your MOTU sound card to one of the ADAT Optical inputs rather than it's own internal clock.

I think that might solve your issue, if the Profire's are not trying to lock to their ADAT inputs. But I could be wrong.

Worth a shot though and would save a lot of expense.

[John Murphy]

Do the Profire's have Wordclock I/O? If so, you might just trying making one of your Profire's the master clock. Then clock the other Profire's to the Master Profire using the Wordclock I/O. Then lock your MOTU sound card to one of the ADAT Optical inputs rather than it's own internal clock.

I think that might solve your issue, if the Profire's are not trying to lock to their ADAT inputs. But I could be wrong.

Worth a shot though and would save a lot of expense.

I had thought of that also and gave it a try tonight. I had to do a smaller set up due to not having enough coax cables to hook up all of the Profires, but the results are the same - snap crackle pop.

I do wish the ADA8200 was out. Although I don't think I really want in on the very first ones.

Still have not decided which way to go (too many options).

John

[John Murphy]

HELP!

I have taken the Audiorails out of the system and started putting everything back together and and my snaps are back. I am seeing them on the input meter mostly on channel 10 and some on 13. mostly in that bank (preamp #2 channels 9-16). I have swapped Adat cables, preamps, and the 2408 mark 2. The only other thing that I can think of is the card itself (424) and the only other cards that I can try are a 324 or RME 9652. Can you skip ports on a 424 card? Use ports 3 and 4 instead of 1 and 2. Any other ideas?

It is running at 54% load at 2x32 and 30% at 2x64. No slipped buffers on either one and evey thing shows that it is locked.
John

[mojogil]

Maybe you covered this already, didn't read the entire post. Did you try the 2626 via firewire? If you use it with a firewire card and hook some pres to the adat ports and don't have any issues, I'd probably think it's the motu card.