MOTUnation.com

Hi,

I am having troubles setting up my routing for my studio.
I have Cubase 5 and my sound card is a MOTU 828 MkII which has optical ins/outs.
I want to set up a TC Electronic M350 as an external effect through SPDIF. I went to external FX and set a bus (the output of my soundcard goes into the optical input of my TC M350 and the return of the effect goes back into the optical input of my MOTU). However i get no sound back into my DAW. The signal goes into the M350 from the card (i can see the leds of my M350 lit up so that means that it recieves the signal from my MOTU), but the problem is that nothing is coming back through my return bus into the DAW.

I tried different cables, different FX units and the same problem. The output goes out of the MOTU into the FX (i can see it on the LED display) but nothing is coming back. My guess is probably something in the Setup of the card. It's like the S/PDIF of the return bus on the motu is not correctly configured ...

Am i doing something wrong ?
Any help is much appreciated

M350 doesn't have optical IO, it has coax SPDIF. You need to define the proper master/slave sync relationship. See the manual. http://www.tcelectronic.com/media/21718 ... nglish.pdf

I have read the manual, but the issue is the same with other outboard fx. I have a tc g-major and it's the same problem. The sound gets out of my card, is processed by the unit but it doesn t seem to get back into the soundcard. I thought that the spdif inputs would allow me to have an extra channel on my card and it could be used as a send/return for external fx etc. ??

It looks like the input of the spdif is not active even if it says it is in cubase.

Any ideas ?

You haven't stated how the devices are being sync'd. They likely need to be sync'd to pass audio. SPDIF inputs are available all the time just like any other input, but the devices must be sync'd for it to work. My recommendation is the MOTU is the master and the others are slave.

Plus you might be using the wrong input (ADAT vs SPDIF), because you said you were using optical, but that can't be true because the TC devices you listed don't have optical IO.

See page 14. On the M350, what color is the DIGI IN button:

Press the DIGI IN button on the M350.
• If the DIGI IN LED is green, the M350 is
locked correctly on the digital input signal.
• If the LED is flashing, digital in is selected
but no digital signal is received within 5
seconds, or the signal is corrupt.