RME FF800 and DP clock question

misty · Post by **misty** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 7:45 am

Hey everyone and Happy New Year
I have an 8 core running dp 5.13. As I'm trying to get to the bottom of some pcie 424 issues I'm using the rme. WC is coming from a Big Ben, but I can't seem to get DP to come out of "Internal Clock" mode.. is this the norm for the FF800? The 800 is telling me it's in slave mode.

d8b, big ben, rme, mtpav, 8 core (10.5.1) dp 5.13 (pcie424 issues)

Thanks
mi

mhschmieder · Post by **mhschmieder** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 4:14 pm

I'm not sure I understand exactly what is happening in DP at your end, but in terms of the FF800, make sure you read the manual several times. It is deep, and the default settings are not very useful.

Specifically (and I must do this from memory as I am not at the studio right now), there is a "second page" to the FF800 settings GUI, which I have found important to switch from default/automatic to specifically locking to my chosen bit rate and word length. However, I must point out that I am not sure if this would still be advised in the case of using an external WC such as Big Ben.

Also make sure to save the changes to flash memory on the FF800 (a button at the bottom of the first page of the GUI).

The mixer GUI is quite deep as well, and some of its default settings might possibly be interfering, but not with clocking. Just with metering, etc.

RME doesn't bother defining some of the terminology, and this makes it hard. I still have to re-read the manual now and then to make sure I am confident of what each feature is really doing and how it interacts with others.

But one point you may not be aware of, is that DP's input monitoring modes only seem to work with MOTU hardware. This is not a huge issue due to the flexibility of RME's cuemix program, but it was a surprise the first time I tried to change input monitoring after switching from the 828 mk II to the FF800.

One thing I am not clear on is the impact of what appears to be a multi-interface setup at your end (that is, two separate I/O devices to get higher live track count). If I have interpreted this correctly, then if you have not already done so, you will need to define an Aggragate Device in Audio/MIDI Setup. If you have not done this, the two devices may be fighting each other for clock master, instead pof chaining to Big ben.

Timeline · Post by **Timeline** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 4:34 pm

When I use my FF800's I always have the first IO on master. DP is set to internal. Internal refers to the first IO in the chain I believe. This is an issue that I don't think MOTU has resolved yet for IO's of different makers for instance a PCI 424 card and a FF800 selected through machine setup. I have had to use Apple Agg Devices to calm the clock issue and even that is dicey.