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hello and help please
i've been a traveler owner for +-8 months. have been experiencing a total distortion of sound output from the traveller when using it with a G4 dual proc 1.25ghz. the distortion is not always there, it usually comes and goes. that is sound output is fine and then a glitchy distortion covers all sound and usually after some time the unit will make some internal clicking sound and the sound with go silent shortly and reset itself to clean output. this happens to me only on the powermac, have done recording/mixing/playback with a G4 ibook and also an old titanium powerbook and though the processors are quickly overloaded on those machines this glitchy distortion doesn't happen..
i've tried every buffer size available, changed the firewire cables, and different fw ports but to no avail. have also been able to reproduce this distortion with other sound progs, bidule, peak etc.... and i'm able to tax the processors of the powermac using built in sound out and never get the same type of problem, so i'm getting a strong feeling its some kind of timing issue with the traveller itself.
i've had this problem since the beginning and have since updated the OS, firmware and drivers and nothing seems to help. i've also eliminated all ilok files(as suggested in the does and don't tips sheet of this forum) but still no help......
i'm gettting pretty desperate for a solution and am considering to re-install the entire operating system, but am ?understandably? nervous of erasing the entire system disk and having to re-install all my progs......cause i'm not SURE this would solve my problem. though like i said the traveller seems to work fine on smaller laptops.
i don't remember the page number but somewhere in the DP manual it mentioned this kind of distortion as being a timing issue, but i can't find any miss match in hz,buffersize, bit rate, etc.......any ideas and help are more than welcome, but if someone suggest something, can you give a sign of how certian what you suggest is safe. and does anyone know is a total re-instal 'safe'?
thanx bryan

Traveller, DP4.61, G4 2x1.25ghz, 1.75g ram, OSX10.4.4, bidule, peak, misc mics, analog mixers, fx....G4ibook 900mhz,840mb ram OSX10.3.9....g4 titanium 550mhz, 1gig ram, OSX 10.4.3

Not saying that this is the answer, but I wonder how likely it would be for this issue to be a problem with the G4's power supply.

Merely thinking out loud.

so an update from motu tech and no solution yet, tried the ext power supply but that didn't help.
i add here the correspondence with motu in hope someone out there can help to solve this problem.


On 15-feb-2006, at 0:24, MOTU Tech Support wrote:

Are you powering the Traveler via the FireWire bus, or external DC adapter? If FireWire, try the adapter. I'd also definitely recommend updating to the latest FireWire driver, 1.40 -- let me know if this persists after the update. If so, try using the Traveler in standalone mode (i.e., without the computer). Route some audio through it for an extended period -- do you experience this at all?


Josh Hetrick
MOTU Tech

thanx for quick response. I was powering from the firewire bus previously. have now bought a plug adapter and now am using the power adapter and it changed nothing. updated the driver to 1.40 which seems to be for the new intel macs? and playing itunes out through the traveler worked for +-10 minutes instead of less than a minute before distorting. I now have the traveler running in stand alone mode(no computer) and I don't have any distortion yet. Athough I do have a problem connecting the spdif digital out from a lexicon MPX100 fx processor. I haven't tried it before so i'm not sure the problem lays with the traveler in this mode.(edit: tried connecting dig out MPX100 to dig in MPX1 and this works, so i assume its not the spdif co-ax cable thats a problem. also tried syncing the MPX1, and getting clock(and audio) from the Traveler into the MPX1 works, but the traveller WILL NOT accept/read clock from the MPX1 and therefore also audio!!!(both the mpx1 and MPX100 give dig signal at 44.1 only) As I said before this distortion only happened when using the powermac G4(mirrored doors, firewire800)_and hasn't occurred when using the laptops. I've also forgot to mention that while recording in DP with this problem the recorded material is clean even though during the recording process it may be distorted. so makes me think its the clock on output? I unfortunately have no other equipment with digital outputs so i can not test the AES or the optical inputs (though i seem to remember recording out to a minidisk player with toslink optical). Any further suggestions????running undistorted in standalone mode for about 2 hours now............
\
bryan

I have exactly the same problem with the same spec dual G4. Have you found a fix?

sorry have found no solution, yet.....
i'm recording on an old slow laptop(4 - 10 tracks withput effects) and then mixing down on the g4...using built in aodio device, so 2 in 2 out.... not an ideal situation! but i don't have the money to replace that noisy g4....

I've located a cheap firewire card so am going to try installing that. Perhaps it will solve the problem!

andemech wrote:hello and help please
i've been a traveler owner for +-8 months. have been experiencing a total distortion of sound output from the traveller when using it with a G4 dual proc 1.25ghz. the distortion is not always there, it usually comes and goes. ....

Sorry for the late reply, I just joined the forum looking for an answer to this exact problem.

I too have a dual G4/1.25. What I found was that my Traveler does not like external FW HD's. If I work off of the internal HD w/o an external HD connected everything is fine. When I connect a FW HD to _any_ available port --comp or Traveler-- I get timing noises. It may run fine for a few moments, but then the noise, and it mutes itself on occasion as well. Rinse and repeat.

I use a non-dualboot G4.

At any rate, if a solution has been found I would love to hear about it.

(The work-around is to constantly move my drives in and out of cases but, well, you know ... not good)

thx

Just posting to bring you moral support on your unsolved problem.

I have a simmilar configuration (PowerBook Titanium G4 - 1,33Ghz - 2GB RAM- OS X 10.3.9) working with a Traveller, but not that undesirable noises appearing on my recordings.

If you find it helpful, we can compare settings and values, just to try solve it.


Some idea comes to my mind: While using another digital audio interfaces, i remember kind of that "noising behaviour" when CLOCK is corrupt or wrong. So, some test could be run DP slaving to an EXT SYNC by wordclock BNC conectors of the Traveler.

Bye