d8b Forum

Hi mates !

This is my first message on this forum. I don't know the traditions here but i guess a bit of introduction would be nice:
I'm a science student in Paris ( so i hope you will litteraly pardon my French hehe ), and I herited my d8b from my father 5 years ago and i had to self-educate to its use somehow.

Recentely, i experienced a really disturbing issue with my setup, and i hope you would be able to help me solve it.
Here are some informations on my setup, basicaly an other (seemly problematic) Mackie-MOTU coupling:

- A d8b on OS3.1, with two I/O Cards DIO8 (with ADAT I/O, TDIF and Sync) and no apogee clock card
- A MOTU 2408Mk3 audio interface (with The PCI-424 in my computer), which was usually connected by the two first banks with the DIO8 Cards in ADAT, and working as SLAVE for ADAT synchro to the d8b.

So here's the problem: Absolutely no sound is traveling to the audio interface from the d8b AND the audio interface is recieving some weird jitter and pops, and sometimes continuus noise on random ADAT channels.

Here's what i already tried:
- Checked digital settings, clock settings, frequency -> everything normal
- Output -> Sound from Audio Interface is perfectly getting to d8b
- The Audio Interface in standalone -> Perfectly working
- Other types of synchro (Word Clock from sync output on DIO8, SPDIF) -> no sound
- Unpluging everything and cleaning DIO8 cards, Changing ADAT cables -> Nothing changes
- Connect these two with TDIF (sync in ADAT, Word clock, or SPDIF) -> Really distorded and jittery sound with regular events of loud noise, since TDIF is plugged in
- Important clue: Sometimes, i switch on everything and recording works perfectly, but since i try to hear something FROM the Audio Interface, a loud noise appears in output and it finally return in that weird state.
- I saw a recent topic about kind of the same issue of MOTU-Mackie synchro. I tried some of the relevent answers, but the thing my problem is still different because the d8b is the master clock and the MOTU is the slave.
- Gently asking my console to work again -> not really efficient
- Unfortunately, i haven't got any other ADAT machine to try with

I hope one of you have any idea of where that may come from (even vague). Any type of clue would help me a lot.
I can of course add some more details or informations if you need.

Anyway i also hope you guys are in security from the virus.
Thaks for advance

Welcome....this place has a wealth of knowledge and really smart guys:

you should consider upgrading to 5.1 OS on d8b
did you have the latest MOTU drivers for PCI card?
check the database as well w.r.t. MOTU

http://www.sonido-7.com/d8b/index.html



8. The Dreaded Rail Cap Failure

This problem occurs on older d8bs and is accompanied by the following symptoms:

A loud thump from every output. Thump Thump Thump (somewhere around 80 BPM)
Lights and meters flashing on and off in double time to the thump
The lights on the pan pots twirl around
No control over the console from the GUI
GUI shows no signs of trouble
Sometimes audio will pass and sometimes not
Sometimes a restart will help but then it comes back
Eventually nothing will stop it
Note: Some d8bs will have similar symptoms if there is an interruption to clock or if an incoming clock is present when the d8b is booted up or if any digital device connected to the digital cards is on when the d8b is booted up. For instance, some boards will act up every time a MOTU 2408 is connected to the DIO8 card when booting. In these cases the thump does not always occur (though sometimes it does), and the pan pot lights don't twirl around, but there will be flashing lights and meters, and the monitor may (but not always) show "DSP Error, Last State Unknown" or similar.

If you have these symptoms and are not an expert audio maintenance technician, you need the help of an authorized Mackie Service Center.

Thanks a lot !
That's exactly it

I was hesitant to upgrade to 5.1, because without flashcard reader it seemed to be way more complex than i thought.
By the way the manual say that upgrades can be done by the ethernet port on the CPU, is it always possible ?

Obviously if you think updating will solve that "Dreaded Rail Cap Failure", i'll do it for sure !

I do have the latest MOTU drivers for PCIe card (since I was forced to replace my old perfectly working PCI card beacuse MOTU made it obsolete for latest version of windows)

Defenetely really smart and helpful guys here !

no sorry ...was not suggesting you should upgrade due to "Dreaded Rail Cap Failure", I just want to make sure you access /review the database first w.r.t. MOTU and upgrades