Delay with MOTU Traveler and Onyx!!

C

CJWalker

Member
IT has been awhile since I posted on this forum and I have recently aquired a Mackie 1620 with firewire for live sound and some extra pres.

I am currently using the Onyx 1620 with firewire and a MOTU Traveler as the center piece. 6 ins on the mackie and a line signal from the LA610 to the MOTU respectively. This is all being tracked by SONAR 4.

After a few minutes of recording drums the MOTU unit builds up a delay on the line signal, being the kick drum in my case. During playback, I notice that the kick track eventually begins to get away and delay.

Has anyone experienced a similar situation? Keep in mind that the Mackie is running on a seperate firewire PCI card with no conflicts. Each unit works just fine on it's own.

Thanks for any input,

Chris
 
I wouldnt know where to begin. I have a Mackie 1640 w/t firewire and use it as my interface with Tracktion 3. Sorry, when I see Onyx on a thread I always see if I can help
 
I dunno, a phenominon with windows? I've never seen something like that before. Maybe are you using a really slow computer? hmm
 
Make sure you have both the Mackie and the MOTU (as well as Sonar) set for the same sample rate. If you accidentally have one set for, say, 44.1 and the other set for 48, that can cause drift or loss of sync between tracks over time in the software. You need to make sure that whatever sample rate you want to use, that you have it set the same at all points during tracking.

G.
 
TerraMortim said:
I dunno, a phenominon with windows? I've never seen something like that before. Maybe are you using a really slow computer? hmm
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Nah. This is just clock drift. While clocks are generally pretty stable, they aren't necessarily going to precisely be at the same frequency. If one is stable at 48,000 Hz and one is stable at 47,990 Hz, you would drift 10 samples per second. The usual threshold for perception of a delay is 30 milliseconds, or 1,440 samples. With a drift of 10 samples per second, it would drift that far in a little over two minutes (144 seconds).

To run two devices at once, you must either resample one on the fly to keep them in sync or you must lock them both to the same clock. Usually, you would do that by setting one to get its clock from an S/PDIF input and run the other device's S/PDIF output to the input of the slave device. In the case of those two devices, you can do even better, though, by routing the MOTU's word clock output to the Mackie's WC input.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Make sure you have both the Mackie and the MOTU (as well as Sonar) set for the same sample rate. If you accidentally have one set for, say, 44.1 and the other set for 48, that can cause drift or loss of sync between tracks over time in the software. You need to make sure that whatever sample rate you want to use, that you have it set the same at all points during tracking.
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At 48 kHz, you would perceive a delay after about 1400 samples (30 msec). With a 44.1 kHz input signal, that amount of delay would occur more than twice in the first second. It's not a sample rate mistake. As I said, it's probably a very small difference in the clock rate (an error in the high single-digit samples per second range).
 
dgatwood said:
At 48 kHz, you would perceive a delay after about 1400 samples (30 msec). With a 44.1 kHz input signal, that amount of delay would occur more than twice in the first second. It's not a sample rate mistake. As I said, it's probably a very small difference in the clock rate (an error in the high single-digit samples per second range).
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EDIT AND CORRECTION:

OK, I just re-read the OP; he said "after a couple of minutes". You're right, something that has that slow of a drift is not sample rate setting, but rather lack of sync. If he said "after a few seconds" or "after a few measures", then I'd bet on the sample rate setting.

G.
 
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I guess I don't understand why you are using two audio interfaces chained to one another. Why go from the Onyx to the Traveler? Shouldn't the firewire out of the Onyx be connected directly to the computer?
 
SonicAlbert said:
I guess I don't understand why you are using two audio interfaces chained to one another. Why go from the Onyx to the Traveler? Shouldn't the firewire out of the Onyx be connected directly to the computer?
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The Onyx FW is not compatible with any other devices running on the same firewire chain aside from another onyx FW; I have a dedicated PCI firewire card for this purpose. My system is an 'older' 3.2G P4 with a gig of ram which is more than efficient for my purposes at the time. I have only had problems when running the Onyx firewire card with the MOTU unit. Let's cut to the chase...

After some disapointing research, and some hope that I stand corrected, here is my conclusion..

There is no way to sync the Mackie Onyx firewire cards with other sources. It is not capable of using an external clock. This task is left to the ***F series of pres.
 
CJWalker said:
After some disapointing research, and some hope that I stand corrected, here is my conclusion..

There is no way to sync the Mackie Onyx firewire cards with other sources. It is not capable of using an external clock. This task is left to the ***F series of pres.
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Ah. Sorry, I assumed all the Onyx mixers had similar jacks. I didn't realize that all the large format mixers only had FireWire via a fairly limited add-on card.

It's a BeBoB device, so the Onyx might sync with a FIREPOD or other BeBoB-based device. Not a direction I'd suggest that you go, though. Beyond that, if it doesn't have any word clock or S/PDIF input or output, then the only way you can use it with any other interface is if you're running Mac OS X with the resampling option turned on, and I can't even guarantee that would work.

You'd probably be better off eBaying the 1620 and upgrading to something else. Sorry.
 
Why don't you just run the Onyx inserts as direct outs from the pres to the inputs of the Traveler? That would give you the extra preamps you need and you'd just be using the MOTU as your interface.
 
Hard2Hear said:
Why don't you just run the Onyx inserts as direct outs from the pres to the inputs of the Traveler? That would give you the extra preamps you need and you'd just be using the MOTU as your interface.
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I have been doing that though I wanted some more extensive I/O options. The traveler provides 4 line inputs. I have been using the aux sends on the Onyx since I don't have a DSub to TRS snake at the time.
 
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